Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Supplementary Feeding and the Perception of Benefits in Malaysian Borneo

University Of South Florida, Tampa FL

Investigators

Abstract

University of South Florida graduate student, Elizabeth Elliott Cooper, working under the supervision of Dr. Linda M. Whiteford, will undertake research on the puzzling popularity of a supplementary feeding program in Malaysia. The program exhibits no clear efficacy in terms of anthropometric improvement, which is the standard outcome measure. Nevertheless, the program continues and, apparently, remains popular, which prompts questions of how analysts should conceptualize and measure the benefits of any development intervention. Cooper will focus her research on two coastal villages in Malaysian Borneo and investigate the possibility that there are cultural models for program benefits, other than those used by health professionals. She will contextualize these models in community conditions, food beliefs, and practices. Her goals are two-fold: to understand the implications of conflicting evaluation standards for the health and well being of rural populations; and to test a unique combination of social science methodologies as a way of better theorizing the complex relationship between cultural beliefs and practices. The methodologies Cooper will use include combining nutritional assessment (child anthropometry and household food security), exploratory interviews, free-recall listing, pile sorting tasks, and participant observation. She will validate these results with a structured survey. In addition, she will compare the results of cultural consensus analysis, which looks at cultural variability, along with variability produced by standardized visual tests, with the results of basic inferential statistics (t-tests, chi-square, ANOVA, MANOVA, and multiple regression). Cooper's research is innovative in how it combines structural and cognitive research. Existing social research in nutrition focuses on either power-related variables (economic, material and political factors) or belief-related variables (psychological, cultural and attitudinal factors). Cooper's multi-faceted ethnographic approach is more holistic, taking into account household economic constraints and actor power differentials as well as beliefs. The research will contribute to expanded use of cognitive methods in nutritional research and add to social science theory on how disjunctions in human belief systems impact human practicies and activities. The research also will contribute to the education of a graduate student.