Browsing by Author "Tuovinen, Emmi"

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion of school lunch research and the discussion of developing school meals. The first aim of the study is to highlight children’s perspective and their experiences: what kind of things, actions and thoughts have an influence on children’s school meal experience. The second aim is to assess the use of the method of empathy-based stories as a method of nutrition research and in a child-centered study. The research questions of the study are the following: 1. How do children describe their school lunch experience in empathy-based stories they have written? 2. What kind of knowledge can be acquired by using the method of empathy-based stories in child-centered nutrition research? Methods. The study is a qualitative study based on a phenomenological approach which, as mentioned earlier, highlights children’s perspective. In this study, data were collected using the method of empathy-based stories. The study was a part of the Nordic ProMeal-study (Prospects for Promoting Health and Performance by School Meals in Nordic Countries). The target group was pupils who attended fourth grade in the Turku region in the academic year 2013–2014. The children were approximately 10 years old. Altogether 190 children wrote empathy-based stories. Half of the children (n = 95, analyzed n = 88) wrote a story describing a positive school meal experience and half (n = 95, analyzed n = 92) of them wrote a story of a negative school lunch experience. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. In addition, the information acquired by the method of empathy-based stories was examined from the perspective of nutrition research. Results and conclusions. As a result of the thematic analysis and the arranging of the data, the data consisted of three themes that described the foodscapes of school lunch from the children's point of view: food and eating, the school lunch situation and the social environment. The pleasantness of the food and the food itself had a significant effect on the school lunch experience in the children’s stories, and foods and dishes were also highlighted by name. In addition, the social environment of school lunch affected children’s experience and other children, friends, food service staff and teachers had impact on how children experienced the situation. The children also expressed their need for autonomy and their opportunity to influence the school lunch situation. The results of this study emphasize the need of taking into account the perspective of children when in developing school meal.