Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
This is a qualitative data collection. The CAFE project was funded by the ESRC and run by the University of East Anglia, the University of Surrey and Age Concern Norfolk. It explored how older women respond to reduced contact with food. The aims and purpose of the project were to: discover the impact on older women of reduced contact with food in terms of meanings of food, social engagement and well-beingunderstand how this impact alters over timeexplore the potential for intervening to restore greater contact with food in these womencontribute to service and policy development.Forty women respondents took part in CAFÉ in Norfolk in 2007/8. Twenty women had individual interviews, with follow-up interviews five months later. A further 20 women took part in group interviews. To participate women had to be aged 65 years and over, and have recently started to cook fewer than three main meals per week from scratch. Of the 40 participants (a purposive sample, average age 82 years), half lived in sheltered accommodation and half lived independently. About half regularly used ready meals, half attended a lunch club or day centre, and five used mobile meals. Almost half relied on others for their main shop. Interviews were audio-taped and fully transcribed, using a chosen pseudonym. The semi-structured individual interviews focused on past and current food experience. The second interview was based around a summary of the first, to value participants' input, empower them in telling their own stories, remind them of topics discussed previously and allow them better to note and discuss changes. The seven focus group interviews, each comprising two to four participants, used similar topic guides and assessed how participants discussed food and food-related work. Further information may be found on the CAFE - Changes Around Food Experience project website and the ESRC CAFE - Changes Around Food Experience award page.
Main Topics:
Topics covered in the interviews include childhood memories of food, employment history and family background, learning to cook, marriage and children, providing food for the family, changes in appetite and eating habits with advancing age, general health, family and social support, mobility, access to shops, use of services. Users should note that the 20 individual interview transcripts within the data collection contain both the initial and follow-up interviews conducted with individual respondents.
Purposive selection/case studies
Face-to-face interview
