Food Literacy How Do Communications and Marketing Impact Consumer Knowledge, Skills, and Behavior? Workshop Summary (2016) / Chapter Skim
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3 Promoting Food Literacy: Communication Tools and Strategies
3 Promoting Food Literacy: Communication Tools and Strategies
Pages 83-112
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From page 83... ...
R Craig Lefebvre, University of South Florida, emphasized the need for researchers to think about population-level interventions, not just individual behavior change interventions, and argued that diffusion theory is a helpful conceptual framework for doing so.
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From page 84... ...
In the panel discussion at the end of the session, when asked by moderator Johnson-Askew how a social norms approach could be used to address obesity given that obesity is becoming the norm, Bauerle replied that when the majority of the population is not doing something one wants them to be doing, one should start instead by holding the attitudinal norm up as a mirror (i.e., most people have healthy attitudes) and using it to spur movement on the social norm.
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From page 85... ...
Also unlike traditional research, participatory design involves not the study of what is but the study of being in the future: how to think about the future, how to create that future, and how to evaluate it. Using the "A Cafeteria for Me" project in San Francisco to illustrate effective participatory design, Neuhauser emphasized the importance of thinking big, generating ideas "fearlessly," and prototyping and testing.
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From page 86... ...
Based on extensive research, a new DGA, the personalized MyPyramid, was introduced in 2005. To use this guideline, Ratner explained, consumers needed to go to www.mypyramid.gov and enter their age, sex, and typical daily exercise level.
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From page 87... ...
Consumers also were confused by food items such as pizza and burritos and how to deconstruct them into grains, fruits, vegetables, and other food groups. The most challenging component of the MyPyramid guideline, Ratner explained, was keeping track over the course of a day, for example, of whether one had eaten one's daily recommended 3½ cups of vegetables.
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From page 88... ...
In contrast, even people who were identified as not being particularly interested in nutrition were motivated to follow the half-a-plate guideline. Together, these findings led Ratner and Riis to conclude that the MyPyramid guideline was not, Ratner said, "going to get us where we want to get in terms of consumer behavior change." The half-a-plate message appeared to be better in many ways.
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From page 89... ...
. Thinking about populations led him to think about marketing, which in turn led him to co-create what is now known as "social marketing." Too often, in Lefebvre's opinion, inadequate attention is paid to what sociologists and others call the "the micro-macro problem," that is, the notion that changing the behavior of every individual, one by one, will 2 This section summarizes information presented by Dr.
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From page 90... ...
And the laggards are traditionalists. Lefebvre remarked that he was focusing on early adopters and the early majority because the relationship between these two groups is a problem most people engaged in population behavior change efforts fail to understand.
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From page 91... ...
. Using adoption of a new technology, as opposed to a food behavior, as an example, he explained that with most technology innovations, when about 18 to 25 percent of the population is using the technology, one of two things happens: either people stop using the technology and it disappears, or the technology catches fire and takes off.
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From page 92... ...
This means, in his opinion that experts in the field of food literacy need to change the way they think. "If there is a takeaway from this presentation," he said, "it is that if we want to improve food literacy and we want to reduce obesity, we have to change ourselves first." Changing the Way Researchers Think Instead of bringing people into experiments, as public health researchers tend to do, most consumer researchers go out into the field and watch people, Lefebvre noted.
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From page 93... ...
He stressed the importance of understanding the motivations of people out in "the jungle." Once those motivations are understood, he suggested, researchers need to generate possible solutions to help people meet their needs, solve their problems, or achieve their dreams. Another problem with much research, Lefebvre continued, is what is called "the depth deficit." Many consumer researchers have found that people in focus groups or in experiments lie about their thoughts and experiences -- not deliberately, but because they cannot explain why they do what they do.
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From page 94... ...
As long as the focus remains on the middle of the distribution, Lefebvre emphasized, researchers are not going to gain insight into how to change behaviors. Only when they start talking to positive deviants, he believes, will they be able to start pushing the diffusion curve.
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From page 95... ...
: "We conclude from this review that applied health sciences research would have a much enhanced probability of influencing policy, professional practice, and public responses if it turned the question around from how we can make practice more science based to how can we make science more practice-based? " THE SOCIAL NORMS APPROACH: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THROUGH A PARADIGM SHIFT3 Successful interventions express empathy, offer no argumentation, support self-efficacy, and recognize the discrepancy between individuals' behavior and the normative behavior in the population, Bauerle began.
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From page 96... ...
Bauerle explained how shrinking the gap between perception and reality can be achieved by focusing on the norm. Elevator behavior is a good example of a social norm, she said.
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From page 97... ...
She agreed with Lefebvre that, in her words, "you need everybody in your sandbox." Bauerle showed another example of a drinking and driving behavioral norms campaign poster, this one for the state of Montana. It shows a group of young adults playing on an inner tube in the snow, all of them smiling FIGURE 3-2 Poster designed by high school students as part of a social norms campaign developed in consultation with Jennifer Bauerle to prevent drinking and driving on prom night.
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From page 98... ...
The example Bauerle showed was a poster with the image of ice hockey players and text that read, "74% of HWS Student-Athletes believe tobacco use is never a good thing to do." She noted that studies have shown that social norms campaigns based on attitudinal norms do work. In one study, her research team showed that first-year college students exposed to an attitudinal norms campaign that corrected misperceptions of campus drinking had 24 percent lower odds of having a blood alcohol concentration greater than or equal to 0.08 (p = 0.024)
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From page 99... ...
Nagle described the "very powerful force" revealed by the values study of canned foods that he and his team conducted. Values studies link the attributes and benefits of, in this case, canned foods, to the target audience's emotions and personal values (see Figure 3-3)
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From page 100... ...
We are putting what we want in terms of behavior change in the context of the values and the emotions they already have." The essence of the "Cans Get You Cooking" campaign was helping women be successful mothers and derive the emotional and value benefits that are inherently important to them. In all the consumer research Nagle and others have done, parents have reported feeling better when they prepare home-cooked meals for their children.
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From page 101... ...
Nagle noted that when his team reached out to registered dieticians, the response was very positive with respect to both the nutritional and "easy solution" aspects of canned foods that were being promoted. On social media, he reported, the increased volume of positive messaging around canned foods was reflected in a dramatic tripling of total mentions and doubling of positive mentions of canned foods.
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From page 102... ...
The emphasis of her presentation was on participatory design, specifically a type of participatory design known as design thinking. Her own interest in participatory design emerged during what she described as a transformative period in her life.
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From page 103... ...
She explained that participatory design is rooted in the design sciences, a branch of scientific inquiry that emerged in the 1960s within the purview of architects, engineers, and people in other sociotechnical fields. Its epistemological foundation is quite different from what underlies most of the work done by researchers trained in the social and health sciences, she noted.
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From page 104... ...
, a school lunch project developed when the San Francisco Unified School District approached IDEO with what it described as a "real problem." Participation in the district's school lunch program was poor, she noted, with both students and teachers being dissatisfied, nobody learning anything about food and nutrition, and the school district losing millions of dollars per year. IDEO accepted the challenge and set a vision for a "student-centered, financially
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From page 105... ...
Neuhauser explained that before the school district engaged IDEO, the school lunch program was a failing system, one that people had been trying unsuccessfully for years to improve. But by applying a little design thinking, removing the limits on people's dreaming, and having them live in the future, "bingo," she said, "they did it." Neuhauser provided workshop participants with several references on participatory design and design science (Neuhauser and Kreps, 2014; Neuhauser et al., 2007, 2009, 2013a,b; Simon, 1996)
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(b) FIGURE 3-4 Changes in a school lunch program that resulted from a design thinking study.
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From page 107... ...
Neuhauser mentioned another ongoing parenting education initiative with the ambitious goal of reaching 10 million parents in the United States with children aged 0 to 5 years. Again, she and her collaborators are using participatory design.
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From page 108... ...
Bauerle explained that if the majority of the population is doing something one does not want them to be doing, one can still conduct a social norms campaign, but with the focus on an attitudinal norm, not the behavioral norm. As she had noted, most people have healthy attitudes.
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From page 109... ...
Funding Participatory Design Research The "A Cafeteria for Me" program described by Linda Neuhauser was "unbelievable," in Johnson-Askew's opinion. She asked Neuhauser about funding for participatory research, given the length of time it takes to build relationships and develop an understanding of a community's needs.
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From page 110... ...
She suggested that a mobile technology-based social norms approach might be helpful. She imagined using mobile technology to give people feedback about what their neighbors are doing, or eating.
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From page 111... ...
It was successful, he explained, because of its combined participatory design and social norms approach. Parents and others were invited to help design the campaign and "dream" about their future.
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