Observation of People: Restaurant Healthy Food Choices Research

This research proposal outlines a study on the motivating factors influencing customers' choices of healthy food in restaurants. The study aims to understand the challenges and drivers behind healthy eating behaviors, considering the increasing health consciousness among the population. The researcher intends to conduct non-participant observation in a local restaurant, analyzing customer orders, body language, and return visits during breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours. The research will utilize field notes, photos, videos, and audio recordings to collect data. The proposal justifies the topic by highlighting the growing demand for healthy options and plans to analyze relevant literature and conduct observations to identify patterns and draw conclusions about customer preferences. The study will utilize the article “Field Research as Social Experience: Learning to Do Ethnography” written by William Shaffir, Mary Lorentz Dietz and Robert Stebbins as the source to cite in the proposal.

Running head: OBSERVATION OF PEOPLE 1
Observation as a means to analyze people

OBSERVATION OF PEOPLE 2
Observation as a means to analyze people
Summary
The following article "Field Research as Social Experience: Learning to do Ethnography"
has been written by William Shaffir, Mary Lorentz Dietz and Robert Stebbins. The authors have
highlighted about field research as an ongoing, dynamic, interactive process (Shaffir, Dietz &
Stebbins, 1994). The authors have pointed out it is important for readers to taken in account the
features of ethnographic enquiry. It has been mentioned in the article that field researchers face
difficulty in gaining intimate familiarity without being in close touch with group members. It is
important for the researcher to have a bond with their participants or researched in order to
increase the chances of their paper being selected. There is also an influence of sex and gender
on field research. Race and ethnicity also affects relationship between the researcher and their
participants. It is also observed that access to research setting can be gatekeepers who hold the
power to provide access to people or situation. This obviously depends on the negotiation skill of
the researcher to successfully conduct a field research. As opined by Kraft-Todd, Yoeli, Bhanot
& Rand (2015), co-operation is one kind of a research setting. A researcher must learn the
different ways of observing. The matter of fact also depends upon a simple basic problem that
revolves around keeping a balance between involvements and acquiring information. This is the
reason why authors have mentioned about maintaining relations with their observant.
Research Objectives
The objective of this research is to focus on analyzing the motivating factors that will
help customers to order healthy and freshly made food in restaurants. In the current scenario,
although people are slowly getting conscious about their health, they are unaware of what
comprises of healthy eating. This has given restaurants an opportunity to add healthy eating

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options in their menus to make them aware of healthy eating and satisfy the needs of customers
who are aware of the concept. There can be different challenges that may stop customers from
opting for healthy practices such as the concept of junk and binge eating. However, a proper
research on the challenges will help in understanding whether customers are eating healthy or
not.
I intend to identify relevant literature associated with the concepts of healthy and why
customers should opt for healthy food options in restaurants. The literature review will comprise
of scholarly articles, peer-reviewed journals, news articles and surveys previously conducted on
this research topic. The research will provide relevant recommendations as well a plan to observe
the behavior of people while ordering food in restaurants.
Topic Justification
According to a survey conducted by National Restaurant Association (2017), 70% of
customers are willing to pay for healthy food if the restaurants menus offer healthy, locally
sourced or environmental friendly foods. However, there are customers who still prefer to eat
food that are easily available and looks appetizing. This can be challenge to convert those
customers who prefer eating appetizing food than healthy food. There are different motivating
factors associated with choosing healthy food over junk food such as focus on health risks,
lifestyle, societal pressure and climatic changes. However, Gagliardi (2015) in her report has
identified that customers can be fickle minded. At one point of time they want to select healthy
eating options while on the other hand they might eat indulgent products. Therefore, restaurants
will run out of indulgent products from their menus.
Steps to carry out the research

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It is essential to understand the behavior of customers and what motivated them to opt for
ordering healthy food in restaurants. Being a non-participant observer, I would require to be
covert in order to analyze what people are ordering and how much are they willing to pay for the
food. Also, it depends on the restaurants if they are promoting healthy food in their menu that
may motivate customers to change their mind. The plan is to observe these customers in a nearby
restaurant and analyze what they are ordering, their body language and see if they are willing to
return to the restaurant again. This observation will be carried on during the breakfast, lunch and
dinner hours as there would be working people and families eating in the restaurant. I intend to
simply observe them and sit beside their table to see if they are happy eating healthy food.
Research Plan
The observation will be conducted for three different one hour sessions wherein the focus
will be on collecting the data related to motivating factors of customers to order healthy food in
restaurants.
Duration Breakfast: 7 AM- 8 AM
Lunch: 12 PM-1 PM
Physical requirements Notebook, photo camera, video camera, voice recorder
Energy level Medium to high
Researchers/Facilitators 1
Participants Restaurant customers
Expected output Text (field notes), photos, videos, audio recordings,
sketches, artifacts, statistics (e.g., counting customers

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per hour) and what are they ordering
References
Gagliardi, N. (2015). Consumers Want Healthy Foods--And Will Pay More For Them. Retrieved
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancygagliardi/2015/02/18/consumers-want-healthy-
foods-and-will-pay-more-for-them/#401101fa75c5
Kraft-Todd, G., Yoeli, E., Bhanot, S., & Rand, D. (2015). Promoting cooperation in the
field. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 96-101.
National Restaurant Association. (2017). Healthy foods drive dining choices. Retrieved from
https://www.restaurant.org/Articles/News/Batch2_201901/State-of-the-Industry-Healthy-
foods-drive-dining-c
Shaffir, W., Dietz, M. L., & Stebbins, R. (1994). Field research as social experience: learning to
do ethnography. Doing Everyday Life: Ethnography as Human Lived Experience, 30-54.