January 23 to February 26, 2025. Qualtrics hosted the survey, which was completely anonymous and voluntary. The survey contained a mix of 24 ranking, 5-point Likert scale, free-response, single-select, and multi-select questions. All questions were optional. The survey consisted of three sections and took roughly 10 minutes to complete; see Appendix B for the full list of survey questions: 1. Problem Diagnosis – Four questions on the top procurement challenges, ranking commonly known challenges, and explaining how these challenges impact their work. 2. Training Needs – 12 questions on priority training topics, training formats, length of training, and training delivery source. 3. Demographics – Eight questions on location of employment, urbanicity, school district size, and years of child nutrition experience. At the end of the survey, participants were given the option to enter a prize drawing. The prize was a trip to a USFA-sponsored school nutrition training at the Culinary Institute of America, funded through an outside USFA grant. The winner of the prize was chosen at random after the survey closed and contacted via email to confirm their prize acceptance. Evaluation of Results
The initial survey goal was 350 responses from across the seven USDA FNS regions, averaging 50 responses per FNS region. At the time the survey closed, a total of 2,653 unique individuals had opened the survey link and landed on the welcome page, surpassing initial response estimates. However, this number included many blank and incomplete responses. After verifying eligibility based on location and excluding empty responses, the final count of survey responses was 1,606. 5 Given that multiple people from one SFA could answer the survey (e.g., a school business official and a school nutrition director from the same district), the final response number is not a count of distinct SFAs. To test for statistical significance of differences in answers between subgroups, the study team used the chi-square test. 6 In addition, text-based responses were individually reviewed and assigned categories for easy grouping and analysis of hundreds of responses. The number of categories depended on the specific free-response question. For example, there were a total of 40 categories assigned to qualitative data for the question on top procurement challenges, while there were only six categories created from qualitative data about other training providers. For some text-based questions, the contents of the answers were multi-faceted, so more than one qualitative tag
6 Procuring Good Food at School: From Contracts to Lunch Trays |
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