El territorio de la comuna de Tres Fronteras

This section presents the three phase strategy which envelopes the case study, the usability strategies and the field experiment that were declared in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 above. The first data collection phase occurred between July 2014 and July 2015. The second data collection phase occurred between August 2015 and December 2015. The third data collection phase occurred between February 2016 and June 2016.

The first phase of data collection focused on identifying knowledge gaps in domestic safe food management. This phase consists of the Preliminary Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective and the Advanced Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective. The preliminary stage – firm perspective stage involved the single case study of the food firm that experienced a food recall incident with a view on exploring the landscape in order to generate insights into the role played by a food firm in updating consumers’ food safety knowledge during a food recall incident. Also, this helped to determine the communication flows and/or gaps between the firm and its consumers when food safety has been compromised; thus leading to the identification of the sources of consumer food safety knowledge gaps. The outcome of this stage answered the first objective for the first research question (RQ1 O1) and led to a focus on consumers rather than firms. Following this stage, the advanced stage – consumer perspective involved the survey of Australian consumers with a view on expanding on the insights from the preliminary stage – firm perspective. At the end of this phase, the researcher was able to identify the knowledge gaps in consumers’ safe food handling practices but more specifically, safe meat preparation/cooking. The outcome of this stage answered the second objective for the first research question (RQ1 O2). The findings from the first phase – identifying knowledge gaps - (both stages 1 and 2) answered the first research question and led to the second phase.

The second phase of data collection (Phase Two: Design and Development of the Safe Food Management App) focused on the considerations necessary for the design and development of a smartphone app to target the knowledge gaps that have been identified in the preceding phase. Utilised as a baseline, a paper-based tool was developed by the researcher based on one information modality – text, and the textual information was retrieved from the websites of the relevant government agencies. The smartphone app was developed based on three information modalities – text, pictures and videos (see section 2.3). While the textual information was the same as that of the paper-based tool, the design and development of the app was based on lessons learnt from existing food safety apps. This led to the adoption of the health literacy online heuristics framework while combining it with a consumer-based evaluation to holistically assess the usability of these applications, their contexts of use and attributes of the end-users. The outcome of this provided insights into the design principles that should be considered when designing a food safety app due to the uniqueness of the context of this study (see section 5.3.4, Table 5-9 for these insights). This answered the first objective of the second research question (RQ2 O1). The insights provided from this phase led to the design and development of the safe food management app. More specifically, the outcome of this phase led to the concept design of the smartphone app which was designed by the researcher. Following this, the researcher worked closely with two mobile application developers, for iOS and Android platforms, to ensure the development of the smartphone app. This answered the second objective of the second research question (RQ2 O2). The findings from the second phase – design and development of the safe food management app - answered the second research question and led to the third phase.

The third phase of data collection (Phase Three: Implementing and Evaluating the Safe Food Management App) focused on the implementation and evaluation of the developed smartphone app using the field experiment described in section 3.3.3. The safe food management app was implemented as an intervention in a field experiment. The impact of the app is evaluated through the post intervention activities as highlighted in section 3.3.3 to determine the impact of the smartphone app, on knowledge acquisition, knowledge retention and perceived behavioural changes. To achieve this, the evaluation helped to determine whether individual attributes and skills influence the use, utility and the user’s perceived behaviour resulting from the use of the safe food

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management app; and to identify whether and how the principle of modality effect influences knowledge retention when optimising the safe food management knowledge of consumers. The findings from the third phase – implementing and evaluating the safe food management app - answered the third research question and the associated objectives.

Section 3.3 has presented the research strategy utilised to ensure that the research objectives are fulfilled and that rich insights were obtained in regards to the research questions. This section has illustrated how the case study, usability strategy, field experiment and the three phase data collection strategies were appropriate for the philosophical stand point of this research and the phenomena under investigation. It is however important to note that survey is not discussed in this sub-section in order to avoid duplication as it is discussed as one of the tools and techniques of data collection in section 3.5.6.

Research Design 3.4

This section presents the research design, employed in this study. This thesis investigates how the affordances of smartphone technology can be leveraged to enhance the provision of information and facilitate knowledge retention. Thus, this study aimed to provide insights into how best to share information to facilitate knowledge retention through the use of technology in an attempt to improve the food management behaviour of Australian consumers. This resulted in the following overarching research question: How can the affordances of smartphone technology be leveraged to enhance consumers’ safe food management?

The research design enabled the researcher to be able to address the following research questions:

Research Question 1: To what extent do gaps exist in consumers’ food safety knowledge?

Research Question 1 Objective 1: To determine the role played by a food firm in updating consumers’ food safety knowledge during a recall incident.

Research Question 1 Objective 2: To identify safe food management knowledge gaps in consumers.

Research Question 2: How can technology support the delivery of food safety information to consumers in a manner that facilitates better understanding?

Research Question 2 Objective 1: To identify whether and how safe food management app designs differ from generic app design principles.

Research Question 2 Objective 2: To design and develop a safe food management smartphone app.

Research Question 3: How does the use of a safe food management app influence consumer knowledge acquisition, knowledge retention and perceived behavioural change?

Research Question 3 Objective 1: To determine the impact of the app on consumer knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention.

Research Question 3 Objective 2: To determine the impact of the app on perceived behavioural change.

The research design was guided by the research philosophy (see section 3.2) and the research strategy (see section 3.3).

The research design mirrored the three phase research strategy and was arranged into three research phases.

Phase one:

 Preliminary Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective

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 Advanced Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective

Phase two:

 Design and Development of the Safe Food Management App.

Phase three:

 Evaluating and Implementing the Safe Food Management App.

This design ensured a holistic viewpoint on the research questions presented in chapter 1, section 1.2. Each of the stages will now be discussed.

Phase one was in two stages; Preliminary Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective and the Advanced Stage, Phase One: Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective.

Phase one, preliminary stage: The Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective stage included the use of semi-structured interviews, document reviews and field notes to gather data from a food firm that recently experienced a food recall incident. The data was gathered in order to generate insight into the role played by the food firm in updating consumers’ food safety knowledge during the food recall incident. This was done by understanding the food recall issues and its implications on the firm; understanding the information and knowledge processes and flows; generating insight into the communication flows and gaps the firm had with their end consumers; identifying the information that was provided to the consumers immediately the recall occurred and identifying the information that was provided to the consumers after the safety situation was rectified. Three interviews, which spanned a total of 6 hours, were undertaken in this research design stage with the firm owner, a technical staff and a sales representative. The data gathered in Preliminary Stage, Phase One - Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective informed the conceptualization of the Advanced Stage, Phase One - Investigating Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective.

Phase one, advanced stage: The Consumer Perspective stage included the use of a survey instrument to expand on the findings generated concerning Australian consumers. But more specifically, to identify the food safety knowledge gaps of consumers. To

achieve this, the survey focused on identifying the information that influences Australian meat consumers’ purchase decisions, identifying Australian meat consumers’ safe food handling practices and behaviours and identifying Australian meat consumers’ information design preferences. The focus was on raw meat due to its high risk of causing cross contamination compared to other food types. This is based on the argument that, apart from commercially prepared food, the consumer home has the highest percentage of food poisoning outbreaks in Australia (OzFoodNet, 2012) and raw meat was one of the major contributors to this as they sometimes contain harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter and E. coli (NSWFA, 2015b). 217 Australian meat consumers were surveyed in this research design stage. The data gathered in Phase one, advanced stage: The Consumer Perspective stage identified the food safety knowledge gap area – safe meat preparation/cooking - requiring an intervention and provided insight into how to assist consumers in empowering themselves by leveraging the pervasiveness and personalised nature of smartphones which led to Phase two – Design and Development of the safe food management app.

Phase two – Design and Development of the safe food management app involved the design and development of a smartphone app in a way that targets the knowledge gaps that have been identified in the preceding phase. As a baseline, a paper-based tool was developed by the researcher based on one information modality – text, and the textual information was retrieved from relevant government agencies. The smartphone app was developed based on three information modalities – text, pictures and videos (see section 2.3). While the textual information was the same as that of the paper-based tool, the design and development of the app was based on lessons learnt from existing food safety apps. Thus, there was a need to three existing apps (text-based, picture-based and integrated) that addressed the knowledge gap area identified in phase one (safe meat preparation) based on a set of criteria (see section 3.3.2.2). Following this, the researcher adopted the health literacy online heuristics framework and combined it with a consumer-based evaluation to holistically assess the usability of these applications, their contexts of use and attributes of the end-users. To achieve this, first, the researcher conducted a heuristic evaluation of all three apps to identify problems based on Monkman and Kushniruk’s approach (see section 3.3.2). Second, the researcher conducted a consumer based evaluation of all three apps through a scenario based focus group session with nine participants (see section 3.3.2.1). In this session, participants

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were asked to fill a questionnaire on demography and the selection criteria to ensure they indeed qualified to participate. Next, they were asked to answer closed ended questions while using the apps. Next, they were asked to write the issues and the benefits of each app on blank cards through a collective process and the card sorting technique was applied. Following this, they were asked to answer open ended questions related to the apps without using the apps. The data gathered during this phase, by combining the heuristic and consumer evaluations, informed the design and development of the smartphone app. The researcher achieved this by developing the concept design and by working closely with 2 application developers, one for the iOS platform and the other for the Android platform between January 2016 and February 2016. Following the successful development and launch into the app store and google play, the app was ready as an intervention tool. This phase was informed by data from the Advanced stage, Phase one and, in itself, informed Phase three.

Phase three – Implementing and Evaluating the safe food management app involved the commencement of the field experiment which comprised of the pre-test, intervention, and three levels of post-test. The pre-test involved the use of a baseline questionnaire to determine the current food safety knowledge of the participants. The intervention involved an information acquisition session for all the participants that included reading, hearing and speaking. However, only the experimental group was able to use the app individually to answer the questions in another copy of the baseline questionnaire. The control group used the paper-based tool individually which contained all the textual information in the app to achieve the same task. Following this, each group converged to have a brainstorming session which facilitated the ‘hearing’ and the ‘speaking’ of the facts in the learning materials. After the intervention, all participants were allowed to take their learning materials (app or paper-based tool) home for follow- up study at their own pace. The first level of the post-test was aimed at demonstrating that the participants could remember what was learnt during the intervention through the use of the same baseline questionnaire which has its questions and answer options re- ordered. The second level of the post-test was aimed at demonstrating that the participants could understand what was learnt during the intervention through the use of a scenario based questionnaire which required short answers in the participant’s own words. The third level of the post-test was aimed at demonstrating that the participants could apply the knowledge acquired during the intervention through the use of open-

Phase 1 – Identifying Knowledge Gaps Answers 3rd research question Phase one, Preliminary Stage: Identifying Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective Phase one, Advanced Stage: Identifying Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective

Phase two – Design of the Safe Food Management

App Research Design Phase 2 – Design and Development of the smartphone app

Phase three – Implementing and Evaluating the Safe Food Management App

Phase 3 – Implementing and Evaluating the smartphone app Answers 1st research question Answers 2nd research question

Phase two –Development of the Safe Food Management

App

No-data collection Data collection

Caption Only

ended questions based on real occurrences in a kitchen environment. A total of 8 participants participated in the field experiment. Figure 3-2 illustrates the research design.

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Figure 3-2: Research Design

Section 3.4 has presented the research design that supports the research strategy and the three phase data collection approach. The next section presents the tools and techniques that support the research strategy and research design.

Tools and Techniques 3.5

This section presents the tools and techniques that support the research strategy (see section 3.3) and carried out the research design (see section 3.4). The tools and techniques included semi-structured interviews, focus groups, document reviews, field notes, card sorting technique and survey/questionnaire. It is however worthy of note here that the term survey and questionnaire are used interchangeably in this study. These data collection techniques supported the aim of the research as presented in section 1.2. The research tools and research techniques are discussed in the following sub-sections and presented in Figure 3-3. It is however worthy of note here that, where multiple data collection tools were used, the primary mode of data collection is the first tool specified which was also italicized in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3: Research Tools and Techniques

Phase two – Design of the Safe Food Management App

Phase two –Development of the Safe Food Management App

Research Tools and Techniques Answers 3rd Research Question Survey data Survey data Semi- structured Interview data Document Review data Field notes data Phase three – Implementing and Evaluating the Safe

Food Management App Preliminary Stage, Phase One – Identifying Knowledge Gaps – Firm Perspective Advanced Stage, Phase One – Identifying Knowledge Gaps – Consumer Perspective Focus Group data Survey data Answers 2nd Research Question Answers 1st Research Question No-data collection Data collection Caption Only

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3.5.1 Semi-Structured Interviews

In this study, the interviews conducted were semi-structured in design. Permission was requested and granted from all interviewees to be involved in the interview process. Each interview session was audio recorded with the consent of the research participants which was obtained in writing. The interviews ranged from 30 minutes to 5 hours in length. The researcher followed the question guide while using follow up questions where additional information was needed. A full list of the questions used in the participant interviews can be found in Appendix F.

At the conclusion of each interview, the researcher reviewed the audio file in order to reflect on the detailed answers received from the participants and on closed responses which facilitated further questions and probes. The reflection of the interview assisted the researcher to complete the field note (see section 3.5.4). Please see Appendix for details on the rationale for choosing semi-structured interviews.