Household Food Waste Survey
Susana Matias, Cooperative Extension Specialist
Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
Household food waste is a major problem in the U.S. The average U.S. household wastes 31.9% of the food it buys, with an estimated value of $240 billion. Household food waste is a complex and multi-faceted issue and is affected by food-related practices (planning, shopping, storing, cooking, eating, managing leftovers). Food-related routines (shopping and use of leftovers) are the main drivers of food waste in addition to perceived behavioral control. Consumers’ misunderstanding of food date labels is associated with more frequent food discards (Neff et al., 2019). Effective educational communication is needed for consumers to understand food date labels (Turvey et al., 2021).
We have conducted an online survey to better understand the current level of household food waste reduction awareness, attitudes, barriers, motivators, and practices of the UC Agricultural and Natural Resources (UC ANR) Division staff and statewide program volunteers. The findings from this survey will allow us to understand their readiness to educate consumers about reducing household food waste and, if needed, to develop appropriate training to prepare them to deliver food waste reduction education. This work will support consumer compliance with California’s short-lived climate pollutant reduction strategy (SB 1383).
We are looking for an upper division student to support data cleaning and data analysis of the survey data.
Role: The undergraduate research apprentice will:
- Clean and prepare survey data for analysis
- Conduct descriptive statistical analyses and prepare figures and/or tables to report findings for dissemination with different stakeholders
- Depending on interests and skills, the apprentice may also conduct inferential statistical analysis (e.g. T-test, ANOVA, linear or logistic regression).
Qualifications: We are looking for an Upper Division student with the following qualifications:
1) Motivated to learn, very organized and detailed oriented (REQUIRED)
2) Proficient in Excel and descriptive statistics, such as calculating means, medians, IQR, proportions, etc. (REQUIRED)
3) Able to use SPSS, Stata or SAS statistical software (HIGHLY DESIRABLE)
3) Proficient in biostatistics, i.e. capable to conduct inferential analyses (see list above) with some degree of independence (DESIRABLE).
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Biological & Health Sciences