ABOUT THE DASHBOARD

This dashboard describes behavioral data compiled monthly from a national survey of 1,200 Americans called Consumer Food Insights and run by CFDAS. In this survey of adult consumers, respondents are shown 21 statements referencing common shopping and eating habits and asked to record “how often that statement applies to you in the last 30 days” on a five-point scale from Never to Always. Responses are displayed according to seven demographic category choices: All, Region, Education, Income, Age, Race, and Sex. The two data visualizations include the “Frequency Chart” and “Mean Response” based on the selected demographic category, consumer behavior, and survey month. 

HOW TO USE IT

Given the specified survey question — “How often have the following statements about common shopping and eating habits applied to you in the last 30 days?” — users choose from the “Shopping and Eating Habits,” “Demographic Category” and “Survey Month” tabs to explore how American consumers report behaving. The dashboard displays a “Frequency Chart” (Never to Always) with responses and the “Mean Response” (1 to 5) with an average score for each of the defined demographic categories.

VARIABLE DEFINITIONS

Response value: Never – 1, Rarely – 2, Sometimes – 3, Often – 4, Always – 5, Does not apply – NA. 

Survey weight: Value assigned to each observation using iterative proportional fitting. 

Weighted value: Multiply the ‘Response value’ by the ‘Survey weight’. 

Frequency chart (%): Sum of the ‘Weighted value’. 

Overall Mean: Divide the sum of ‘Weighted value’ by sum of the ‘Survey weight’. 

Mean response: Overall mean by demographic sub-category. 

DATA SOURCES

The Consumer Food Insights survey from the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability.

DASHBOARD AUTHORS

Annapurni Subramaniam, Sam Polzin, Jayson Lusk