Fast Food Photo Study

Carnegie Mellon University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Obesity

Treatments: Other: Menu edited

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02267954

HS14-582

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators aim to discover if people of different demographic levels are more or less attentive to changes in calorie information vs. changes in price information on a restaurant menu. The investigators will record whether the calorie/price change was noticed or not, as well as how quickly the calorie/price change was noticed, depending on condition and individual differences.

Full description

Participants complete a short study regarding their ability to detect "mistakes" in a printed version of a fast food restaurant menu. We ask participants to identify the differences between the menu board and a typical menu board at that location. Individuals list the differences that they find and have a chance to win a prize if they identify the most mistakes among participants recruited that day. The differences created will remain constant (e.g., featuring Pepsi products instead of the typical Coca-Cola offerings, including items from other restaurants on the menu), including changes to calorie labels and price labels. Additionally, we recruit participants in a variety of locations to test for differences between demographics (e.g., income groups, education levels, and BMI levels).

Enrollment: 309 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age 18 or older
• Speaks English
• Willing to complete both task and follow-up survey

Exclusion criteria

• N/A

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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309 participants in 1 patient group

50% Prices/50% Calories

Experimental group

Description:

The participant is exposed to the baseline menu, but the prices are edited to be at 50% of the actual price (e.g., a $1 coffee is listed as costing $.50) and the calorie labels are edited to be at 50% of the actual content (e.g., a 500 calorie Large Fries is listed as having 250 calories). In addition, the baseline mistakes are still included. This is the "Menu edited" intervention.

Treatment:

Other: Menu edited