Eating Habits Of International Students After Relocation: A Descriptive And Inferential Analysis

HST6106 Health Science Research

Descriptive Statistics

This section is devoted to examine the eating habits of the international students and to examine whether the eating habits of the students have changed after the ECU. To analyze the same the primary data was collected and the analysis was conducted in SPSS. Since the data was in text format the data was first coded in excel and then imported to the SPSS for further analysis. In the first section the results from the descriptive statistics have been shown. The findings from the inferential analysis is shown in the second part.

Descriptive statistics

Findings from the descriptive statistics is presented in the current section. Since all the data in the analysis was categorical variables, so the graphical representation of the findings have been shown in instead of the numerical format. The categorical variable are easy to understand when presents in the graphical format.

The first figure is of the distribution of the age. As the figure indicates, 71 % of the respondents are in the age group of 25-34 followed by 21 % of the respondents in the age group of 18-24. The higher proportion of the respondents in such younger group is because the survey was conducted among the students and in most cases the students are in these age group. Only 8 % of the respondents are in the age group 35-44.  This shows that this study will give an idea about the eating habits of the younger generation.

Another demographic variable included in the current study is the gender. As the results shows that proportion of female is 66 % whereas the proportion of the male is only about 34 %. This shows that there is representation of both genders in the sample, however the female respondents are higher. This is may be because there are higher number of females in the target population. One advantage of having higher number of female in the data is that the female are considered to be more sensitive about the food as compared to the male. So, this study will provide a more robust results about the eating habits.

Since the survey was conducted among the students the degree for which the student has taken admission is also taken into consideration. As the findings suggest 86 % of the students are from the postgraduate course whereas rest of the students belongs to the undergraduate course. The higher representation of post graduate students is helpful because the students in undergraduate are of the nature to try new things whereas while coming to the post graduate student becomes more concern about the health and the eating habits.

Demographic Variables

In terms of the course, most of the students are from the course Masters of public health followed by the project management course whose proportion in the sample is 16.4 %. Apart from this other courses included in the study are master in information system, nursing, master of professional accounting and engineering. This shows that there is representation from all courses in the sample. This will allow the researcher to generalize the results from the analysis. 

Furthermore the results from the variable, the year of course is shown in the above figure. As the figure shows 52 % of the respondents are in the second year followed by 24.7 % of the students in the third year. The proportion of the students in the first year is 23.3. The higher proportion of the students in the second year is may be because most of the students are from the post graduate which is usually of 2 years.

Another important variable for the current study is the source of information about the health issues. As expected 74 % of the students said that they get information from internet followed by University/school training courses. The proportion of information from family and other sources are very less as compared to the internet. With increase in the use of social media and the development in the information technology most of the information is available online which is most convenient and cheap source of information. So, in the recent time not only the students but people in all age group prefer to search it online instead of asking family friends or read books.

Another question asked to the respondents was whether they live with their family or away from family. As the figure above shows most of the students stay away from the family. The higher percentage of students staying away from the family was expected as the students are the international students. Also, another important point is that the students who stays with their family are expected to follow the healthy food as compared to the students who stay away from the family.

In addition another question was asked about the other activities of the students apart from their studies. As the results shows different options was given to the students and they were asked to give the frequency of such activities. As the results shows, the everyday activities includes movies, sports gym and other activities. However proportion of such students is very low. On other hand for most of the students do not go to pub and disco. Also the proportion of student who rarely goes to sports/gym is also higher.

Eating Habits

Eating habits

Results shows that cooked vegetables is eaten everyday by most of the students followed by grain and cereals. On the other hand meat is the never eaten by most of the students.

Among other food, dairy products eaten daily by the students followed by eggs and the meant products and fish are never eaten by most of the students.

Furthermore pulses are eaten by some of the students on daily basis whereas most of them eat only 3-4 times a week. Only small proportion  of students have not eaten fast food.Lastly the alcoholic products are never used by the students. Milk is used every day by most of the students

Results shows that home cooked food is eaten by students on daily basis whereas cold meals, frozen meals and take away foods are rarely eaten by the students.

In this section the results for the eating habits of the respondents have been collected. As the figure above shows when asked about the breakfast 67 % of the students said that they eat breakfast at home whereas 26 % said they do not eat breakfast at all. Since most of the students are expected to be at home in the morning the breakfast eating at home is higher.

When it comes to lunch 41 % said they have lunch prepared at home and another 34 % said they have lunch at home only. The proportion of students having lunch at café is higher as compared to the breakfast.

Finally for the evening meal, 78 % said that they have it at home. This indicates that students try to have the evening meal at home. They get back from college/work in the evening and have their food at home.

The last part of the descriptive statistics shows the results whether there is difference in the eating habits after the ECU. As the results shows more than half of the students said that there is lot of change in the eating habits whereas 35 % there is little change. Only 11 % said there is no change. So, overall the ECU has changed the eating habits of most of the studentsInferential analysis

For the inferential analysis the chi square test has been conducted. Since the results shows that there is change in the eating habits after the ECU, so it has been tested whether there is significant change in the eating habits for different gender, age, course and year of course.

Inferential Analysis

Chi square test

Age and the change in the eating habits

Table 1 Results from the chi square test for the change in eating habit for different age group

As the results from the chi square tests shows that the value of Pearson Chi-square is 4.517 which have 4 degrees of freedom. However the two tailed significance value is more than 0.05. This indicates that there is no statistically significant difference in the change in the eating habits for students in different age. One reason for such results is may be because most of the students in one particular age group so the difference is not significant.

Gender and the change in the eating habits

Table 2 Results from the chi square test for the change in eating habit for different gender

The second chi square test has been conducted to examine whether there is statistical significant difference in the eating habits for male and female. The results for the same are shown in the table above. As the first table suggests out of 48 females 21 said there is little change and 21 said there is a lot of change. So for female students there is change. In case of the male out of 25 18 said there is a lot of change. Furthermore the results from the Pearson Chi square test indicates that the pearson value of 5.363 is not statistically significant at 95 % confidence interval. However the value is significant at 90 % confidence interval as the two tailed significance value is less than 0.1.

Course degree and the eating habit

Table 3 Results from the chi square test for the change in eating habit for different course

The third chi square test whether there is significant difference in the eating habits of the students from different course. As the results suggest, in this case also the Pearson chi square test of 1.42 with 2 degrees of freedom is not statistically significant at 95 % confidence interval. So, it can be concluded that for undergraduate and the post graduate students there is no difference in the eating habits.

As the results from the descriptive statistics shows that for most of the students the eating habits have changed, so it can be concluded that for most of them (both undergraduate and post graduate) the eating habits have changed. The chi square is significant if for some students the eating habits changes and for some students the eating habits do not change.Source of information and change in the eating habits

Chi Square Test

Table 4 Results from the chi square test for the change in eating habit for different groups of student with different source of information

The next table as shown above is to test the statistical difference in the eating habit on the basis of the source of information. As discussed in the previous section there were various source of information for health related issues which were used by the students. As the results shows, for this case also the Pearson Chi square is 3.963 and its significance value at two tailed is 0.682.

Since the 95 % interval for confidence have been taken into consideration the value is not significant. This indicates that the change in the eating habits do not change with the change in the source of the information. The results for source of information have shown that internet is the most used source for information and also most of the students said that there is change in the eating habits. Since the results for most of the students is similar the chi square do not show significant difference from one group to another.

Table 5 Results from the Chi square test to examine the difference in the sources of information for different age group

The above results from the chi square test shows that the value of Pearson Chi square is 13.383 with 6 degrees of freedom the value is statistically significant. This refers that there is statistically significant difference in the source of information for different age groups. In other words students in difference age group use difference sources to get the information about the health related issues.  As results suggest higher proportion of students in the age group 25-34 gets information from internet whereas the students in the age group 18-24 gets information from university/college trainings.

Discussion

The findings from the descriptive and the inferential analysis have shown some pattern about the eating habits of the students. The first observation is that internet is the most popular source of information for the students. The sub division of the internet on social media, newspapers and blogs would have given clearer picture about the behavior(Kabir, Miah & Islam 2018). This is because the younger students have expected to collect information from the social media and other students from newspaper and articles. Another results from the analysis is that most of them are living away from the family(Hartwell, Edwards & Brown 2011; Ganasegeran et al. 2012).

Results and Discussion

So whatever they are eating, they have to either prepare it themselves of buy it from outside. So, students either choose to have cheap foods or the one which are easy to make. This may also have affected the eating habits of the students. If the students stays with their parents they are expected to eat healthier food. This is either because of the pressure from the family to eat healthy food of influence by the family members to eat healthy(Siahpoush et al. 2014; Hamil & Hassan 2012). Furthermore the results also shows that the students neither go to the pub or disco neither they go for sports of gym regularly.

This indicates that the students are more focused on their studies and they are not exploring other options much. If they starting going to the pub and disco more frequently, it is expected to have negative impact on their health(Edwards, Hartwell & Brown 2010). On the other hand, if the students goes to the gym or sports daily are expected to have better health. In addition for breakfast and evening meal most of the students prefer at home, whereas for lunch the percentage of students having in the café is higher as compared to other meals. This indicates that students tried to have food at home whenever possible(Alakaam et al. 2015; Hartwell, Edwards & Brown 2011).

References

Alakaam, A, Castellanos, D, Bodzio, J & Harrison, L 2015, ‘The factors that influence dietary habits among international students in the united states’, Journal of International Students, no. 2, pp. 104–120.

Edwards, J, Hartwell, H & Brown, L 2010, ‘Changes in food neophobia and dietary habits of international students.’, Journal of Human Nutrition & Dietetics, vol. 23, no. 3.

Ganasegeran, K, Al-Dubai, S, Qureshi, A, Al-abed, A, Am, R & Aljunid, S 2012, ‘Social and psychological factors affecting eating habits among university students in a malaysian medical school: A cross-sectional study’, Nutrition Journal, vol. 11, pp. 44–48.

Hamil, S & Hassan, D 2012, Managing Sport: Social and Cultural Perspectives, Routledge, London.

Hartwell, H, Edwards, JS & Brown, L 2011, ‘Acculturation and food habits: lessons to be learned’, British food journal, vol. 113, no. 11, pp. 1393–1405.

Kabir, A, Miah, S & Islam, A 2018, ‘Factors influencing eating behavior and dietary intake among resident students in a public university in bangladesh: A qualitative study’, PLOS ONE, vol. 13, no. 6.

Siahpoush, IA, Arjmandi, H, Baz, YD & Siahpoush, BA 2014, ‘THE GENERATION GAP AND ITS EFFECTIVE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FACTORS AMONG ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDENTS OF ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY, NORTH KHUZESTAN BRANCHES’, International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 124–141.

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