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Research

Research

Research

Summary

Prior academic research has indicated adherence to a vegetarian/vegan diet depends on social and motivational factors including health and ethical beliefs. The proposed approach builds upon this work but is more comprehensive, tapping a broader range of factors, including: synergy or conflict between the dietary goal and other significant goals, resources for goal pursuit, goal self-efficacy, emotion regulation in relation to goal pursuit, and the nature of the social context (facilitative or hindering) of the dietary goals. We seek to understand how this set of social and motivational factors may influence adherence to dietary preference goals. We will compare these factors across two groups, those who report successful maintenance of a vegetarian or vegan goal for more than a year (VEG Group) versus those who are seeking a reduction in meat, seafood, poultry, dairy, and/or eggs but report that they struggle to reach/maintain their goal (STRIVE Group).

We plan to have two rounds of surveying. In the Fall of 2017, we plan to screen approximately 2000 participants as part of the large survey that is regularly administered by the Psychology Department to all students enrolled in the Introduction to Psychology class. From that pool, we seek to identify approximately 200 students in the VEG Group who have maintained their respective diets for greater than one year and a second group of 200 students in the STRIVE Group.

Timeline

July 2017 — July 2018