REVISED focus group Appendix II_Moderator Guide

Appendix II

Make Your Calories Count Focus Groups

Draft Moderator’s Guide

1. Exploring participants’ daily habits related to maintaining a healthy lifestyle and managing their diet. (What are participants’ concerns; how, if at all, participants address these issues, what about addressing these issues with their children and other family members).

1. Tell us about the food you and your family members eat; do you typically plan what you are going to eat?

2. Do you plan your meals? How do you plan your meals? [Probe for: daily, weekly; before shopping, before preparing a meal, etc.]

3. What helps you in planning what you eat or prepare for yourself? What makes planning what you eat or prepare difficult? What about the food you prepare for your children?

4. How many of your own or your family’s daily meals do you prepare yourself? Do you cook from scratch or eat pre-made meals?

5. Tell us about your snacking. Typically, on what occasions and how many times a day do you (or your family) snack? What are your typical snacks? Do you have any concerns about your snacking? What are they?

6. Do you know what the Nutrition Facts label is? Do you look at the Nutrition Fact labels on snacks? What is particularly useful about Nutrition Facts label on your snacks? What is not useful?

2. Exploring what currently motivates and prevents consumers to pay attention to the Nutrition Facts label. (What role, if any, the Nutrition Fact label has in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and managing diet.)

1. Do you use any information from Nutrition Fact labels when you shop? What is it useful for?

2. Do you use any information from Nutrition Fact labels when you cook? What is it useful for?

3. Do you use any information from Nutrition Fact labels when purchasing snacks? What in particular do you look for?

4. When is the best time to look at the Nutrition Facts label? [Probe for: when shopping vs. when preparing a meal]

5. How could the Nutrition Facts label help you in planning what you and your family will eat on a given day? What about more long-term meal planning?

3. Exploring what messages would motivate consumers to use the Nutrition Facts label in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and manage their diet (as opposed to using Nutrition Facts label merely for product selection).

1. In the ideal world, what would be the best way of healthy eating for people, anything specific about food products themselves; do people know how much to eat?

2. Do you think you know the best way to eat to stay healthy? What are some of the best ways to eat to stay healthy? [Answers likely to touch on types of food, quantity, maybe time of day, not snacking…]

3. When people do not follow those best ways of eating that you have brought up, what are the consequences? [Try not to probe; we expect they will talk about obesity, diabetes, hypertension, malnourishment, eating disorders; but let them come up with responses without probing].

4. What do you think it is about food that makes people overweight? What about how much people eat and how often?

5. What is important to know about how much to eat?

4. Investigating what would get consumers interested in serving sizes/portion sizes. Learning from participants how to talk about cutting portion size.

1. How do you know what is the portion size appropriate for you to eat?

2. What makes it difficult for you and your family to eat appropriate amount of food?

3. Do you talk to your family about food portions? How do you think you could talk to them about food portions? What would make you want to talk to them about food portions?

5. Testing participants’ response to current “Make Your Calories Count” messages. (FDA’s Website content testing: is content sufficiently challenging?)

[Provide participants with printouts of “Make Your Calories Count” Website. Give them time to read its content.]

1. What are your overall reactions to the content of this Website?

2. What are the main take away points of this Website?

3. What particularly would be helpful to you? In what way?

4. What is not clear/not understandable?

5. What would you change about this Website in general? What about the character of the “label man”? What about the content? Anything else?

6. Do you have any other comments or suggestions?

6. Post-exposure questions investigating whether the messages in the Make Your Calories Count website would help motivate consumers to use the Nutrition Fact label in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and manage their diet.

1. How the Website would help you in making healthy food choices? Which particular message/s or information? Why?

2. In what way, if at all, would this Website help you decide on appropriate amount of food for you and your family?

3. Are there any other suggestions about making this Website more helpful to you in order to maintain a healthful diet for you and your family?

Moderator’s Guide Page 3 2/5/2021