1. A Survey Of College Students Eating Habits
Jackie Nelson
March 27, 2016
Intro Into Statistics

2. Background Information
Since I am a Nutrition and Fitness major, I am extremely fascinated about
what the average college student diet consists of. Since most college students work
part time jobs or are taking a significant number of classes, I was interested if being
a college student affects if students eat more at home or out based on their time
availability, and how much on average it would cost them. With statistics showing
1/3 of Americans being overweight, I believe that there is a significant area of
interest is where people consume their meals and how much they are spending
(CDC, 2015). Statistics also show that Americans are spending more on eating out
than buying groceries (Fox News, 2015). I conducted this study because I was
interested to see how the life of a college student would affect these different
characteristics.
Data Collection
My sample was collected via an online survey created through
http://surveynuts.com/en. This survey then provided a url to send to my
participants, and through that I would collect my data. My survey was conducted
through Facebook, through an initial post, which explained the purpose of the
survey, and that college students were only allowed to participate.
My survey could include sampling bias. Since my data showed that only 11
males versus 19 females did the survey, this could be due to the way it was
collected. This shows bias in the survey since there are not equal numbers of male
and college students who participated, so making generalizations could be hard.
The questions included in the survey are as follows:

3. 1. Are you male or female? Qualitative
2. What is your favorite type of food? (American) (Italian) (Asian) (Mexican) (Fast
food) (Pick one closely related if category is not present) Qualitative
3. Do you prefer to eat out via restaurants or fast food, or make your food from
home? Qualitative
4. How many times a week do you eat out on average? (Generalize your number)
Quantitative
5. How much do you spend on average weekly for food? (Please round dollar
amounts by 5) Quantitative
6. How much do you spend average weekly on fast food? (Please round dollar
amounts by at least 5) Quantitative
7. On average, how many hours do you work each week? Quantitative
Excel Spreadsheet attached
Summary of Statistics
For the question, how many times a week do you eat out on average, the
mean was 3.4. The median for the data was 3.5, mode was 4, variance was 5.07,
standard deviation was 2.25, and the five number summary was 0, 2, 3.5, 5, 7.
Starting with the minimum, quartile 1, the median, quartile 3, and the maximum.
For the question, how much do you spend on average weekly for food, the
mean was 40, the median was 40, the mode was 40, the variance was 140, and the
standard deviation was 12.03. The five number summary for this question was 20,
30, 40, 50. Starting with the minimum, quartile 1, the median, quartile 3, and the
maximum.

4. For the question, how much do you spend average weekly on fast food, the
mean was 12.5, the median was 10, the mode was 0, the variance was 192.6, and the
standard deviation was 13.88. The five number summary for this question was 0, 0,
10, 27.5, 50. Starting with the minimum, quartile 1, the median, quartile 3, and the
maximum.
For the question, on average how many hours do you work each week, the
mean was 14.57, the median was 15, the mode was three numbers-0, 20, 15, the
variance was 93.9, and the standard deviation was 9.69. The five number summary
for the data was 0, 0, 15, 25, 30. Starting with the minimum, quartile 1, the median,
quartile 3, and the maximum.
Graphs
Participants Male or Female
This graph shows the data collected in the survey relating to the sex of the
participant (question 1). This graph is a pie chart and shows the percentages of
males versus females who participated in the survey. As you can see, the males that
Males
37%
Females
63%
Males Vs Femals

5. participated made up 37% of participants (11 males total) , while the females made
up 63% of participants (19 females total). This shows that there were more females
completing the survey than there were males.
Favorite Types of Food
This graph answers the question about the participants favorite types of food,
question 2. This is a bar graph that shows you each type of food category including
Italian, Asian, American, Fast food, and Mexican food provided on the Y-axis. While
on the X-axis, there are the number of participants that choose the types of food as
their favorite. For Italian there were only 2 of the 30 participants that said Italian
was their favorite. For Asian food there was 6 participants out of 30 that said it was
their favorite. For American there were 9 participants out of the 30 that said it was
their favorite. Fast food there was 6 participants out of the 30 that considered it
their favorite. Lastly the graph shows that for Mexican food there were 8
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Mexican
Fast Food
American
Asian
Italian
Number of Participants
Favorite type of food
Favorite types of Foods

6. participants that said it was their favorite. This graph shows you that the favorite
food group out of the participants was American, while least favorite was Italian.
Average Number Meals Ate Out Weekly
This graph answers the question about how many times a week on average
do you eat out? It is a box and whisker plot that uses the five number summary to
show a range of data and divides it into quartiles. This graph shows that the data is
symmetric. The minimum of the data as one can see is 0, while the first quartile is
2, the median is 3.5, the third quartile is 5, and the maximum is 7.

7. Correlation of Average number of hours worked weekly and average amount
of money spent on food.
This graph is a scatter plot that shows a correlation between on average how
many hours do you work a week, and the average amount of money you spend on
food weekly. The correlation coefficient is .7413. Since the correlation coefficient is
positive this signifies that as the average number of hours worked weekly by people
increases the average amount of money spent on food weekly also increases as well.
This scatter plot shows that there is a low degree of correlation between the two
variables, since the plots are all increasing in the same direction but in a random
sequence.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Average amount spent on food weekly
Average number of hours worked weekly
Number of Hours Worked vs Money
Spent on Food

8. Correlation between the average number of hours worked weekly vs. the
average spent weekly on fast food
This graph is a scatter plot that shows a correlation between on average how
many hours do you work a week, and the average amount of money you spend on
fast food weekly. The correlation coefficient is .316. This is a positive coefficient,
which depicts that as the average number of hours worked weekly increases, so
does the average amount spent weekly on fast food. The graph is extremely
scattered showing an extremely low degree of correlation.
Conclusions/Summary
I learned from this data that the majority of people in college like to eat out
versus make their food at home. I also learned that people who work more hours
throughout the week while being in college are more likely to spend more money on
food and of that amount, the more hours they work, the more they are likely to
$0
$10
$20
$30
$40
$50
$60
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Average amount spent weekly on fast food
in dollars
Average Number of hours worked weekly
Average Number of hours worked
weekly vs Average spent weekly on fast
food

9. spend money and eat fast food. This did not surprise me, because I know from
personal experience that when people are really busy in classes and working, they
are less likely to take time to cook at home since it’s more time consuming and more
likely to eat out.
If I were to conduct a survey like this again or re-do this survey the only thing
I would do differently is how I collect the data. I would not use Facebook the next
time I tried to collect the data. I would try to use various methods of surveying to
eliminate bias as much as possible. Also if I had more time there would have been a
lot more questions I would have liked to ask the participants. For example I am
really interested in the levels of obesity and overweight in those who answered the
survey that said that they ate out constantly. However, I feel like asking this
question in a survey would be really tricky to eliminate response bias, because I
really doubt that people who answer honestly if they are overweight or obese.
Overall I found this project to be really interesting. I liked conducting my
own study and then using my knowledge throughout the chapters to enter and
calculate my own data and my own graphs. My own personal reaction from the data
is really unchanged though. I didn’t really see anything that made me super
surprised in the data or the answers to the survey.
References
"Adult Obesity Facts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
"Americans Spend More Money On Dining Out Than on Groceries for The First Time
Ever." Fox News. Fox, 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.