Implication of Gender and Social Status of College Students to their Food Allotment

Population: All college students in the University Belt Sample: Select only five universities, 100 students for each of the five universities

Introduction College years are imperative in shaping one’s future. This is the time when students give their best shot in everything and become conscious of the consequences of their deeds because they want to secure life after college. During those years, students do not get the usual time of sleep that they should have. Most of their time is spent in studying for exams, doing loads of school work, attending late classes, and socializing. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health (one of the world’s foremost medical research centers), college students are one of the most sleep-deprived populations. Sleep deprivation has been attributed to different conditions such as weight gain. Sleep researchers from the University of Colorado have found out that staying up late and getting just five hours of sleep, increases a person’s metabolism. Particularly, based on the findings published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March 2013, sleep-deprived participants burn an extra 111 calories a day. Naturally, this calls for more food intake.
As one of the most sleep-deprived populations, college students also have higher food consumption. This means that a relatively large part of their allowance is used up for food. This research aims to know the amount that college students apportion for their food. The researchers are aware that there are several factors to consider in figuring it out. Some of those are gender and social status. Because of the fast-paced change in the environment, gender is not anymore limited to male and female and so the researchers would like to take into account the newly developed genders. This research is conducted to know whether these variables have a lot to do in determining how much college students spend and to what extent do they matter.
The significance in the discovery of the association of gender and social status on how much of the allowance of college students is allocated and spent for food would let the researchers get a hold of their lifestyle and let people assess themselves whether they are spending too much. This study would also help present and future owners of food chains to know their target market. They can review their marketing strategies or devise another one to adapt to the changing environment and hence boost their performance which will then secure their position in the market.

References

www.campusmindworks.org www.healthysleep.med.harvard.edu www.well.blogs.nytimes.com www.uhs.uga.edu www.brown.edu