Educated Choices Program: Living Lab 2021
Since our 2020 report, the evidence showing the impact of education interventions on animal product consumption has grown, including several peer-reviewed publications using real food outcomes. The Educated Choices Program continues to be one of the leading organizations delivering this proven intervention at a large scale.Our vast and ongoing data collection and analyses can provide further insights into the ways of maximizing the impact of education interventions for reducing animal product consumption. The following recommendations are based on data from 12,513 student survey responses.1. For presentations overall: a. Presentations positively influence students’ intended and self-reported diets. b. Health, animals, and the environment are the most important motivators. c. Taste and family diets are the most important barriers, but their importance is declining over time. d. The most frequently-mentioned theme was animals.2. To optimize content delivery: a. Healthful Eating and Ethics of Eating are the most effective presentations for inspiring change; Future of Food is least effective. b. In-person presentations achieve about 10% more change than online videos.3. To target the most promising students: a. Females, older students, and those in science classes are most open to change. b. More change is achieved in lower-income and more conservative towns, but less is achieved in more agricultural states.As we continue to monitor trends in survey data through the Living Lab, we will also expand our analyses to include follow-up surveys, control group comparisons, email outreach experiments, and experiments using actual food outcomes.