Representative Sample for Performance Period? (STARS)
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This post is related to STARS, AASHE's Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System.
Hello All!
I'm attempting to document the Dining Services credit for my university and I'm a bit confused by what may constitute a "representative sample" of the otherwise 12-month consecutive performance period. The credit guidelines say that "when using samples, institutions should accomodate seasonal and other variations in sustainable food availability and purchasing." I'm really wondering... how short of a sample amount of time might be accepted, and how can we go about accomodating seasonal/other variations. We're likely going to be starting this sampling period by February and into the spring in the Mid Atlantic region, so I'm guessing that local foods may be somewhat sparce early on.
Thanks for any feedback you can offer!
Thanks for your patience Julie!
I spoke to Devon Ahearn at the Real Food Challenge (dahearn@thefoodproject.org or http://realfoodchallenge.org) and he gave me some useful information that may be helpful to you:
"Generally, students determine a representative sample depending on their menu cycles, region, and project scale. For instance, students at UC Irvine chose to study 8 weeks worth of purchasing because their school's menu cycled every 4 weeks. They could capture most major trends in food purchasing by looking at 2 month's worth of invoices.
For a school in the Northeast, we usually tell students to study purchasing for 4-8 weeks in the fall and 4-8 weeks in the spring, depending on their menu cycle. Purchasing does continue through the summer, making a full-year assessment ideal, but that length of study has proved really difficult for full time students.
I hope this helps! Determining the study's scale is generally a judgment call made by students doing the research, and a representative sample depends primarily on how often the menu changes in the dining hall."
I hope this information is helpful!
Best--Jillian
Thank you Jillian! That's very helpful for us!! I appreciate you taking the time to put that together.
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Hi Julie,
Thank you for this question. I am working on researching some information in order to provide you with the best response. My apologies for the wait, but I will try to post something shortly.
Best,
Jillian