Hello and apologies if this doesn’t fit the No Stupid Questions community exactly… I’m working on a research project in the UK, around food bank usage, and wondered if anyone who uses a food bank would be prepared to answer a few questions…

  1. Are you able to get enough food, toiletries, items from your local food bank?
  2. Do you have any allergies or illness that makes it harder to use a food bank? ie. they never have any gluten free bread, or everything contains too much sugar
  3. Do you care about branded foods versus non branded?
  4. Are there items you can never find or are in very short supply at your local food bank?
  5. How were you referred to the food bank?

The research project we are working on is looking into all aspects of food banks from someone deciding to donate, to storing the donations, to people receiving them, and seeing if there is some way to improve what is being donated and/or the quantities.

Any help answering these questions would be really helpful 🙂

  • Arxir@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What kind of researcher posts a five-question-questionnaire on Lemmy?

    Who are you and who employs you? What is your agenda?

    Is this an undergraduate thesis?

    Where else did you post your questionnaire? Are you accounting for selection bias?

    Why do you not use a questionnaire service like survey monkey?

    These are all yes/no questions and no questions regarding background, sex, age, income, etc. What kind of conclusions do you think you will be able to draw from that?

    • cman6@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Hello!

      What kind of researcher posts a five-question-questionnaire on Lemmy?

      I’m not a professional researcher or anything, just someone looking to do research in this area. I thought there might be people on Lemmy who wanted to share their story or experiences.

      Who are you and who employs you? What is your agenda?

      I am cman6. I’m not comfortable disclosing person information about my employer. I stated my agenda… “The research project we are working on is looking into all aspects of food banks from someone deciding to donate, to storing the donations, to people receiving them, and seeing if there is some way to improve what is being donated and/or the quantities.”

      Is this an undergraduate thesis?

      Nope

      Where else did you post your questionnaire? Are you accounting for selection bias?

      This is the only place I’ve posted it so far. I’m not concerned about selection bias to be honest, although I am aware of it. I’m just looking for anecdotal information.

      Why do you not use a questionnaire service like survey monkey?

      I just thought this would be faster. Plus I wanted to keep things informal.

      These are all yes/no questions and no questions regarding background, sex, age, income, etc. What kind of conclusions do you think you will be able to draw from that?

      Well I don’t have any experience going to a food bank so I was hoping to gather a general idea of what that might be like.

      Cheers!

      • JoBo@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        You’d be much better off going to one of your local food banks, speaking to the volunteers there and seeing if they’d be prepared to facilitate introductions to some of their users, if they think you smell right.

        If you do so, pay for their time. A proper pay for their time, not some token gesture. It’s not a fucking game.

  • dragonfly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hi, I’ve been going to my local small town food bank for almost a year. I’ll try to give you some thoughtful responses.

    Are you able to get enough food, toiletries, items from your local food bank? 
    

    I’m not sure how to answer this. Do I get enough that I won’t need to purchase additional food, etc. that month? No, I still need to shop for more. However, I get a really good amount most months and am able to eat a lot better. My local pantry gets a lot of donations from the nearby supermarket chain, and they are pretty good about supplying meat especially. I normally buy very little meat to save money, so getting it from the pantry means I get a lot more protein in my diet. I guess technically there is enough that I could eat only food from the pantry each month, but I’d be eating a lot of canned peas, corn, tuna fish, peanut butter–you get the idea. It wouldn’t be a greatly varied diet by the end of the month.

    Do you have any allergies or illness that makes it harder to use a food bank? ie. they never have any gluten free bread, or everything contains too much sugar
    

    Surprisingly, this has been pretty good. I’m on a low fat diet, and my husband is allergic to wheat, with a few other things that he doesn’t tolerate well but are okay in small amounts. I regularly find things like gluten free boxed mixes, sometimes bread or wraps, etc. Not huge amounts, but more than I expected.

    Do you care about branded foods versus non branded?
    

    No–however, sometimes the quality of generic is pretty bad, and I’d rather skip it. Think things like the generic version of Lipton dry soup packets. The name brand is pretty terrible already, the generic is just awful.

    Are there items you can never find or are in very short supply at your local food bank?
    

    Milk, fresh or powdered. Nonfat powdered milk is great for me, stores well and takes up little space. Cheese, especially nicer stuff like cheddar that works well in a lot of meals and sandwiches. Butter and/or margarine. Fruit juice. Cooking oil. Basic cooking ingredients like sugar, salt, spices. Eggs are hit or miss, sometimes there’s plenty, sometimes none. Oh! I always get a jar or two of peanut butter, but rarely jelly to go with. I always get pasta, but only regular “thick” spaghetti. That’s fine, but it would be so nice to have some thinner types. I usually get maybe one can or jar of pasta sauce, but almost never Parmesan to go with it. ETA: I forgot–frozen vegetables! Sometimes they have fresh, I always get canned, but rarely frozen and it tastes so much better than canned.

    It’s a good question, and it’s sort of hard to answer, because I really never know what I’m going to get each month. The past two months have been very light, and I got only a small amount of meat and almost no dairy. I did get a 5 pound block of mozzarella, which is great, but not super versatile!

    How were you referred to the food bank?
    

    I did a web search for food banks in my area.

    If you’d like, please feel free to ask me any more questions!

    • cman6@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Wow! Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! And thanks for offering to answer more questions.

      I’m working with two other people doing research, so I’ll pass this on to them and let you know what they think.

      Massive thanks again!

  • Kalash@feddit.ch
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    1 year ago

    What is the “NSQ community”? All I can find is the software project.