Our Process

For our project, we thought it would be impactful to choose a topic that was beneficial to both Lehigh students as well as a demographic beyond Lehigh.

We decided to study health and nutrition specifically because we were curious if Lehigh offered foods that met the nutritional guidelines for college-aged students, and how well Lehigh students were meeting nutritional recommendations. Another aspect of our study, however, included a brief look outside of Lehigh. To compare Lehigh students' nutrition to other college-aged students in the area, we also studied students at Lafayette and Muhlenberg to see how the nutrition compared across schools. 

After deciding on a topic, we brainstormed questions we wanted to ask and information we wanted to know, including where people choose to eat, how much people choose to eat, and how much they think they know about what they should be eating. It was important to us to ask this last question, because it really gets people thinking about if they are making the correct choices. We also asked participants questions about their body image and self perception.

To conduct our survey, we used the tool Qualtrics, and sent out the Lehigh-specific survey on social media and to our circles of friends, which included athletes, members of Greek life, and general Lehigh students. It was important to us to make sure our data was sampling a broad spectrum of students, so we sent it to an even amount of students from each classification category. We also posted our survey in the general class Facebook groups to ensure our data would be gathered from a random sampling of students. At first, we did not receive many responses to our survey, but as we sent it out a second or third time, we began to see the number of participants increase.

To conduct the surveys for the other two schools, we were able to use a similar method of distribution. We sent our survey to one or two friends we each had at the respective schools, Lafayette and Muhlenberg, and then also posted it on their class Facebook pages. Unfortunately, the students at the other colleges were not as receptive to participating in a survey for Lehigh students, and we did not get the same amount of respondents as we got for the Lehigh survey, getting approximately 15 responses per school. While this amount of data cannot be directly compared to the Lehigh data, we can still use the amount of data we do have to get a general idea of what is offered nutritionally at these schools.

​

Our study did operate under some limitations. Time constraint on the project forced us to abbreviate our survey and its later distribution. As students ourselves, our access to a wide range of respondents was limited, and thus our data represents a smaller sample size than if we had the ability to send out school-wide notifications to Lehigh, Muhlenberg, and Lafayette. 

If we were to conduct another survey in the future, we would make a few changes to the way we presented the questions. Firstly, instead of asking a general question and then having a ranking system for each of the food groups, we would separate it into separate questions so that the data was easier to interpret and compare, Secondly, we would ask for more detail on what types of food students were consuming. If students report eating 2 servings of protein, for example, is is typically lean meat or more fatty red meat? When it comes to grains, do students opt for whole wheat or white starches? The answers to these questions would give us more insight on the actual nutrients in the diets of college students and increase the level of detail we could analyze. 

​

In general, however, the combination of the survey and outside research provided us with enough information to examine the nutritional habits of college students and the impact their diets had on their lives. 

​

To read more about the study, click through the tabs at the top of the page.