primary research

Pilot Questionnaire:

The aim of my pilot questionnaire is to test the wording of the questions and to see if the questions are understandable, useful to my investigation and will give my relevant knowledge/information and to see how often people cook basic recipes and if the basic recipes they cook are healthy and reflect current dietary advice.  I will test it on 6 people and then evaluate my results to see what I discover and how I can improve the questionnaire.

Results from pilot questionnaire:

Evaluation of results:

From my results I can tell that 5 out 5 people asked regularly cook basic recipes in their households: 40% of which cook basic recipes daily and 60% of which cook basic recipes on a regular basis. Although I asked 6 people in total, I only have 5 results for question one as one of the people asked did not understand the wording: ‘basic meals’. One of the aims of my pilot questionnaire was to test the wording, and because one person did not understand the question this fulfils one of my aims. Because of this, I will make sure all the wording of all the questions in my questionnaire is clear and easy to understand, particularly in question one.  I can also tell from my results that 16% of the people asked adapt recipes to reflect current dietary advice daily and 67% of people asked often adapt the basic recipes/meals to reflect current dietary advice. 16% of the people asked stated that they rarely/never adapted basic recipes to reflect current dietary advice because all of their meals were healthy anyway and therefore already reflected current dietary advice. 67% of people asked think that they have adequate knowledge of current dietary advice and 33% think that they are very knowledgeable of current dietary advice meaning that all 100% of people asked have the knowledge to adapt basic recipes to reflect current dietary advice. I also discovered from my results that 67% of people asked regularly buy healthier choice products from supermarkets and 33% from time to time. Although nobody found the wording of the question: ‘Do you ever buy the ‘healthier choice’ products or ready meals in the supermarket?’ hard to understand, I am not sure that this question is of much use to my investigation as the wording isn’t very interlinked to my investigation. If I was to ask this question in my questionnaire I may reword it like so: ‘Do you ever buy healthier choice products or ready meals in the supermarket because you think that they are basic recipes that have been adapted to reflect current dietary advice?’ so that it is more relevant to my investigation. In question six I discovered that

67% of people asked feel that special offers in supermarkets tend to be on calorie dense foods with no nutritional value such as biscuits than staple healthy foods which are the base of many basic recipes and 33% think that there aren’t more special offers on calorie dense foods then on staple foods that are the base of many basic recipes. I asked this question because if foods which are high sugar, salt, saturated fat and have no nutritional value are cheaper then may encourage people to buy them and not cook basic recipes that are healthy and nutritious reflect current dietary advice. I also found out that 83% of people would like there to be a wider range of healthy, nutritional foods and products in supermarkets and grocery stores in order to encourage people to cook basic recipes that reflect current dietary advice    and 17% of people think that it wouldn’t make a difference.  

In conclusion, from my pilot questionnaire results, I conclude that there is confusion about what the healthy eating really is amongst the people asked and I think they are relying on the supermarkets to tell them and inform them on what foods are healthy. For example: 67% of people asked regularly buy ‘healthier choice’ products from supermarkets meaning that they are assuming these products are healthier than the usual standard product and therefore reflect current dietary advice. However, low fat ‘healthier choice’ products are often high sugar to add flavour because there is less fat in the food. From these results I am going to base my questionnaire on current healthy eating messages to see if people actually are aware of what healthy eating is. I will interlink the healthy eating message with basic recipes and see if people can interlink healthy eating with basic recipes in their cooking.