Data was collected for both quantitative and qualitative strands. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, an electronic questionnaire was developed and distributed to all participants unfortunately only six students with private emails responded. All students using university emails did not respond as access was denied and gate pass permission was not granted, as a result, the only solution was to use hardcopies method for the survey. A pilot study was conducted prior to the main study with the aim of pre-testing the measuring instruments to be used. This has assisted the researcher in adjusting the measuring instruments (Yegidis and Weinbach, 1996:
132).
27 3.5.1 Quantitative data collection
The researcher distributed the questionnaires through the student class representatives of Nursing, Pharmacy, and Optometry. Questionnaires were delivered by hand so that the participants could complete them in their own time and then the researcher collected them within two days (De Vos, 2005: 168). Participants were reminded about the aim of the study and the consent form before completing the questionnaire.
It was a self-administered semi-structured questionnaire that had three sections.
Section A contained demographic information (adapted and adopted from Booth and Anderson, 2016) and Section B contained nutrition knowledge in the form of multiple- choice questions (adapted and adopted from Perlstein, McCoombe, Macfarlane, Bell and Nowson, 2017).
The multiple-choice questions comprised 25 questions: questions 1 – 5 were about food-based dietary guidelines, questions 6 – 15 food groups, questions 16 – 20 nutrients contents, and questions 21 – 25 were about nutrient benefits and deficiencies. Section C contained food insecurity questions (adapted and adopted from Food Insecurity Experienced Scale (FIES) by FAO Voices of the hungry, Wambogo, Ghattas, Leonard and Sahyoun (2018). It had 8 questions, asking about the past 12 months of experience with response options of no or yes and frequency response options of rarely (if it happened once or twice), sometime (3 – 10 times) and often (> 10 times). Participants were requested to complete all the data to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics (Brink, Van Der Walt and Van Rensburg, 2012). The total number of questionnaires returned were 250 out of 285 that were distributed. There were 35 non- responses.
Thirteen (13) questionnaires out of the 250 were excluded owing to inadequate data, resulting in a sample size of 237 and a response rate of 94.8%. Baruch (1999) reported that a response rate of 60% with a standard deviation of ± 20 is acceptable.
3.5.2 Qualitative data collection
The researcher grouped participants into three (3) categories based on the FIES results, i.e., food security or mild food insecurity, moderate food insecurity and severe food insecurity.
28 The researcher purposefully selected participants from the three categories. Thirty- eight (38) participants who responded yes on the food insecurity experience scale questionnaire, with a total raw score of seven (7) to eight (8) yes were selected to participate in the interview session. Twenty-four (24) participants were not interviewed because of the following reasons: fourteen (14) of the participants’ cell phone numbers were forever on voice mail, nine (9) did not pick up the call after an appointment was scheduled and 1 participant’s number was incorrect. The total number of participants who remained was14.
The interviews were scheduled at a time that was convenient to the participants, mostly it was in the evening after their classes and only a few opted for the day. It was a telephonic interview due to Covid-19 restrictions and the University of Limpopo regulations to cap the rate of the infection. The researcher conducted the telephonic interviews using an interview guide (Annexure F).
The interview guide had one central question: “Could you kindly explain how you cope when you do not have enough food or money to buy food and strategies that you apply to cope with the situation during the university term”. This was followed-upbyprobing questions. The researcher used probes to allow the participants to elaborate more on the topic (Povee and Robert, 2015).
The duration of the interview session ranged from a minimum of nine minutes to a maximum of twenty-one minutes. The researcher reassured the participants of the confidentiality of the information that they shared and encouraged them to talk liberally about their coping strategies while dealing with food insecurity.
3.5.3 Inclusion criteria
Second, third and fourth-year level students who were registered in the School of Health Care Sciences in the departments of Optometry, Nursing and Pharmacy were included in this study. De Vos et al. (2005) stated that in a qualitative study, purposeful participant selection is critical, so specific criteria must be established.
3.5.4 Exclusion criteria
First, second, third and fourth-year level students in the School of Health Care Sciences in the Department of Optometry, Pharmacy and Nursing, who were not in the university for the past 12 months, were excluded from the study.
29 Human Nutrition and Dietetics students at all levels were excluded because they were conversant with the subject matter under study. All participants who did not agree to participate, to sign the consent form and participants who agreed to participate but failed to complete all the necessary data needed were also excluded from the study.
3.5.5 Pilot Study
A pilot test was conducted on six students from the School of Health Care Sciences, to evaluate the ease of use and clarity of the instrument for both quantitative and qualitative strands. Based on the results of the pilot study, items were revised, merged, and eliminated on the self-administered questionnaire and the interview guide.
Modification of the interview guide was to ascertain that the surveyed participants interpret the meaning of the question as intended (Creswell and Hirose, 2019). In addition, the content of the instruments was reworded as needed to achieve goal comprehension. The results of the pilot study did not form part of the main study.