Feeding MI Families Project Approaches
Guided by the principles of Community-Based Participatory Research, Feeding MI Families worked to achieve its goal of elevating the experiences, perspectives, and needs of Michigan’s families experiencing food insecurity through four stages:
- Parent Leadership Board Engagement
- Text and Phone-Based Surveys
- In-Depth Interviews
- Developing Parent-Driven Recommendations for Policy and Practice Change
With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Feeding MI Families was first established to engage parents in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Battle Creek. A second infusion of support from the Michigan Farm Bureau Family of Companies allowed us to expand our work to include parents across Michigan’s rural counties. This dual focus allowed us to learn from many parents across Michigan and gain insight into similarities and differences in families’ experiences and needs.
Parent Leadership Boards
Parent engagement is the foundation of Feeding MI Families. To accomplish this, we convened three Parent Leadership Boards, two for our urban project (one operating fully in English and one operating fully in Spanish) and one for our rural project. Parents participating in the Parent Leadership Boards all self-identified as parents (including biological mothers and fathers, adoptive mothers, and grandparents) and experienced food insecurity at some point in their lives. We recruited these parents through existing relationships with community organizations and recommendations from other parents.
Our first several meetings with our Parent Leadership Boards focused on relationship building, establishing trust, effective communication, and ensuring an inclusive team culture. We had hard conversations – Why was this a project funded through a university versus community-grown? Why was a white woman leading the project, not women of color who are well aware of the solutions that their communities need? Did we mean it when we said we wanted parent leaders, or was this going to be another effort that came into communities in need and took what they needed, not investing? Together, we worked through these conversations, building humility and friendships.
Our Parent Leadership Boards had many responsibilities over the life of the project. Parent Leaders were responsible for identifying and prioritizing project objectives, strengthening approaches to recruit other families to engage with the project, partnering with project staff to guide data interpretation, and leading critical conversations about project findings with policymakers, influencers, and community members.
In recognition of our Parent Leaders’ expertise and contributions, they were all paid fairly for the time they contributed to the project.
Text- and Phone-Based Surveys
To understand how Michigan families facing food insecurity engaged with diverse food assistance resources, we developed a survey for parents across our priority areas to complete via text message or phone. We set goals to have a specific number of parents from each city (Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Battle Creek) and each rural region of the state. Input from the Parent Leadership Boards was essential to refine our advertising. Parent Leaders contributed ideas for and refined our project logo and branding, social media ads, flyers, and postcards. Our Parent Leaders then distributed our recruitment materials through their personal and professional networks, and our study team also shared the materials with hundreds of family-serving organizations within our communities of interest.
Parents completing our survey had to meet the following requirements:
- They had to self-identify as a parent. This means that parents, grandparents, foster parents, and other guardians were welcome
- They had to reside in a zip code within our communities of interest
- They had to respond affirmatively to 1 of 2 questions assessing food insufficiency:
- In the past 12 months, have you ever worried that your family’s food would run out?
- In the last 12 months, did the food you bought ever not last and you weren’t able to buy more?
Additionally, our software set restrictions to allow each individual to participate only once and participants needed specific cell service providers (e.g., ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, or smaller companies connected to these providers) and not a Voice Over IP (VOIP) provider. These restrictions reduce the likelihood of fraud. Our Parent Leadership Boards confirmed with friends and family in their communities that nearly 100% of individuals had a cell phone from one of the allowed providers.
We implemented the text messaging in partnership with Mosio, a two-way text messaging company specializing in mobile solutions for research. The screening questions and the subsequent survey were offered in English and Spanish. Parents texted the word FOOD or COMIDA to our study phone number to begin the survey and determine if they were eligible to participate. Then they would immediately get information about Feeding MI Families and our screening questions.
If parents were determined to be eligible to participate, they were given the option to continue sharing information via text or have a study staff member call them so they could complete the survey over the phone. If parents responded that they wanted to participate by text, they were automatically progressed through the survey questions. Parents who opted to complete the survey over the phone received a call from one of our staff members, fluent in English or Spanish, within 1-2 business days.
The quality of information parents shared in their surveys was like nothing we had seen before. We realized that parents today feel extremely comfortable texting, perhaps more comfortable than completing surveys using our standard methods, such as a web-based platform. Parents who completed the survey received a $25 gift card via email or mail.
Data collected through our surveys were organized, reconciled, and analyzed by our team. Organizing and interpreting parents’ responses to our open-ended questions also included the Parent Leadership Boards. Using standard approaches to qualitative data analysis, we reviewed the range of responses that parents provided to each question, developed themes that represented their responses, and then used qualitative analysis software to apply the themes to every response to every question. Responses from our Spanish-speaking parents were kept in Spanish during the coding process to avoid losing any nuances through translation.
In-Depth Interviews
To ensure that we captured the nuances and depth of parents’ experiences with food assistance and their ideas for improving it, we completed interviews with 187 parents who had completed our survey and responded affirmatively to a question about whether they would like to participate in a follow-up interview. We completed the interviews via phone, Zoom, or WhatsApp, depending on the parent’s preference, by interviewers trained in respectful and engaging interview techniques. The interviews were audio recorded, and project staff reviewed a subset of recordings to provide interviewers’ feedback on their approaches and engagement.
We developed the interview questions in collaboration with the Parent Leadership Boards. Questions followed up on the feedback parents gave us in their survey and sought to elicit greater detail about parent perspectives on the food assistance programs they have used, as well as experiences of mistreatment or discrimination that they have experienced related to using food assistance. The semi-structured nature of the interviews meant that interviewers aimed to ask parents all of the questions but respectfully asked personalized follow-up questions that allowed for a natural conversation, and parents could guide the discussion to cover topics not covered. Parents received an additional $50 for participating in the interviews.
After the interviews were completed, each audio recording was transcribed and reviewed for accuracy. We then approached the qualitative coding process by generating a list of themes in parents’ responses to the questions and having two trained staff members review each transcript to apply themes to the parents’ responses. Like with survey response coding, we kept responses from our Spanish-speaking parents in Spanish during the coding process.
Developing Parent-Driven Recommendations for Policy and Practice Change
This work resulted in an incredible collection of stories, feedback, ideas, and experiences about food assistance and food insecurity shared with honesty and transparency by Michigan parents. As you will see as you read through our findings, some of the experiences of our parents have been heard many times before – food assistance is not enough, families are still not able to make ends meet, and it is too difficult for many parents to get and maintain receive food benefits. Although this knowledge is not new, we hope the consistency and veracity of parents’ experience will motivate action. Other experiences and ideas shared by parents have never been heard before, perhaps due to parents’ shame from persistent stigma and discrimination against people experiencing poverty and relying on government assistance. We are so proud that Feeding MI Families can bring this knowledge to light.
Throughout the sections of this report, you will see that our parent-driven recommendations for change fall within one of three themes:
- Stigma and Discrimination are Central Barriers to Food Security
- Small Modifications Make Big Differences to Families
- Families Want Dignified Access to Fresh and Safe Produce, Proteins, and Dairy Products
We identified these themes in partnership with our Parent Leadership Boards and feel they capture the heart of what Michigan families experiencing food insecurity want those in power to know and take action on.