Four students in the Community Research Seminar have combined class work with real-world goals by organizing a project to investigate hunger and food insecurity in the Middletown community. The undertaking aims to illustrate the demographic of local citizens who struggle to put meals on the table.
Currently, such statistics only exist on the statewide level. The Middlesex Coalition for Children (MDCO) believes that these statistics are too broad, and that some communities may have bigger food problems than thought, especially among children.
Maria Nankova ’05, Tiffany Lo ’05, Amelia Long ’06 and Beth Coddington ’05, began their work after MDCO applied to have their endeavor continued by students at the beginning of the semester. They will analyze and report their findings in early May.
“The organization might be able to present the results with the goal of not only raising awareness in the general public and among politicians, but also requesting more funding,” Nankova said.
Sociology professor Rob Rosenthal, who leads the research seminar, stressed that his role has been minimal. The students picked their group, developed the project, and will present the results.
“As the methodology is being formulated, I attend group-agency meetings, occasionally offering suggestions but mainly staying out of the way unless I think some large mistake is about to be made,” Rosenthal said.
The project’s methodology consists of two parts: a phone survey and a self-administered survey.
The students acquired a phone list of Middletown public school students K-12, a group of about 5,100 students, and have been randomly selecting numbers to call. They have also been distributing printed flyers to the parents of local preschool children in order to collect information about children aged below the age of five.
The self-administered survey is partly based on the USDA’s 18-point food security survey which separates households into food secure, food insecure and food insecure with hunger.
As a reward for participating in the survey, students have been handing out coupons for free ice cream cones at Jim Freeman’s Praline’s Ice Cream on Main St. to those who complete and turn in the self-administered survey.
“Mr. Freeman has been absolutely amazing in working with us on this project and we are so lucky to have him provide his services of yummy ice cream for the children on Middletown,” Lo said.
Although lacking a sugary reward, the phone survey has also met success.
“More than half of the people I’ve talked to willingly cooperate; some people I have to ‘convert’ or convince to participate,” Nankova said. “Response rate in general is about 70 percent of those who actually pick up the phone.”
“From my point of view, it looks like we’ll have enough participants to make this study worthwhile for us, for our agency, and for Middletown,” Long said.
When the survey is completed, copies of the final written report will be available at Russell Library, the Center for Community Partnerships library, and the Middlesex Coalition for Children office, open to the general public to view if desired. For the group of students this experience has been a positive one so far.
“We have all managed to work remarkably well together and have all managed to move this project forward in a very smooth manner,” Lo said. “We all just really hope that this project will end up successful, meaning we will get an accurate statistic.”
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