Alimentación salud y cultura - SANHISO C. International health and ...

AlimentAción, sAlud y culturA: encuentros interdisciplinAres
focus GrouP
285
A focus group was conducted with 11 women from a local Women’s
Institute (WI) group in Saltburn, Cleveland and the women were all
aged over 56 years old. The WI is a social group most frequently populated
by older women who meet to share activities and social events.
It is of note that the focus group was thus made up entirely of women
and it could be argued that men of similar ages would be able to provide
the same quality of data. The decision to conduct this aspect of
the study with only women was purposeful because among this generation
the women had responsibility for the majority of shopping
and cooking, having control over the families diet. The reason this
group was selected was because it was felt that these women would
be able to provide a more representative and historical account of
changes in food portion size.
Website foruM threads
Threads were created on two internet forums of different natures.
The first was published in a forum on Jamie Oliver’s website, with
the intention of attracting individuals with a keen interest in food,
whereas the second thread was created on the forum of a local newspaper
website, to obtain further views from people in the North East
of England, where the study was taking place.
Using the internet as an aid to research means that the constraints
of the traditional field site become unbounded. This approach facilitates
access to a greater number and diversity of people than a piece
of sited ethnographic research would allow, significantly affecting
potential sample. Escobar argues that the transformation of computing,
in particular the internet, provides a ‘privileged arena’ (1994) for
anthropological research in many different fields, such as culture, biology
and history. As the internet is an interface through which communication
occurs, the perceived safety and anonymity which it provides
to participants could encourage them to report more honestly
and openly. It was predicted that participants in the forums would be
more likely to discuss and reveal less socially acceptable behaviours
and also be more critical of society and policy in relation to obesity
and portion sizes than in situ participants would.