More food for thought: a follow-up qualitative study on experiences of food bank access and food insecurity in Ottawa, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Despite the widespread proliferation of food banks in high-income countries over the past several decades, there is a paucity of data regarding the long-term experiences of the people who rely on food banks. We were unable to find any other studies with follow-up interviews later than 6 months after baseline. OBJECTIVE: This study examined the changes in the lived experiences of people who accessed food banks over a period of 18 months. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 people who accessed food banks in Ottawa, Canada and who had participated in a 6-month study that ended one full year before this follow-up study was done. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed through a general inductive approach involving repeated readings and coding of relevant segments of text with NVivo software according to themes that emerged iteratively. Code reports were then used to discuss and reach consensus on a final set of themes. RESULTS: Three main themes emerged: (1) chronic physical and mental health issues intersecting with food bank access; (2) psychosocial impact of relying on food banks; and (3) living on a low income and dealing with poverty. Chronic physical and mental health conditions were prevalent among the participants. As well, 10 of the 11 participants in this 18-month follow-up continued to rely on food banks as a regular resource - not as an emergency relief measure - to supplement their nutritional needs. While most of the participants reported that food banks helped them in some way, many shortcomings were also noted regarding food amounts, quality and choice. Overall, there was little change reported since the 6-month follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: The shortcomings reported by participants can mostly be attributed to the dependence of food banks on charitable donations; thus, despite the commendable work of food bank staff and volunteers, participants described the food assistance as inadequate. Additionally, long-term food bank usage was a common denominator in the lived experiences of all our participants; therefore, our findings reinforce the need for assistance programs that target long-term food insecurity and its underlying causes, to replace or supplement charity-based food bank programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.034 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".