Recruitment at the organisational level

Wales is sub-divided into six Unitary Authorities and a pragmatic decision was taken to select an LEA from the Unitary Authority in which the researcher resided. The number of schools and percentage Free School Meal (FSM) entitlement of the LEAs in this Unitary Authority are shown in Table 13. FSM entitlement was used as a proxy measure to render the sample representative of the socio-economic spread within Wales. It is commonly used as an indicator of socio-economic status (SES) within education such that it forms the basis of school funding and reporting of performance figures (Local Government Data Unit Wales, 2006a), even though it has been reported as an imperfect proxy in this regard (Croxford, 2000; Hobbs &

Vignoles, 2010). Nevertheless, it has been used as a proxy measure for SES in

previous food related studies (K. H. Hart, et al., 2002). Within Wales, mean FSM entitlement per LEA was 13.77% (range 8.1% - 21.23%).

Table 13 Number of schools and FSM entitlement of LEAs within the target Unitary Authority

Number of schools FSM entitlement

126 17.72%

104 16.89%

76 16.69%

53 16.78%

47 10.08%

39 16.25%

38 8.10%

30 20.22%

27 21.23%

Mean = 16%

NOTES:

Figures obtained from the National Pupil Database in February 2007 (Local Government Data Unit Wales, 2006b)18.

The LEA used in the study is indicated in bold.

During the pilot study, the researcher was contacted by a parent who had received an information leaflet from the pilot school. The parent was a catering manager within an LEA who was undertaking a quantitative benchmarking exercise in preparation for the Appetite for Life roll out and who expressed an interest in collaborating with the study. As the LEA concerned consisted of a large number of schools from which to sample, had a FSM entitlement close to the mean for the unitary authority and also covered the pilot school, its Chief Schools Officer was approached first. Consent from

18 The data on this site was taken from the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC). At the time of sampling, the data related to January 2006. The website has since been removed and the 2006 data is no longer available

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this LEA was obtained in August 2007 and no others were approached. In line with Foster (1996) and with the wishes of the Chief Schools Officer, each school’s entry to the final sample was subject to willingness of its local gatekeepers to grant access and to sufficient number o f participants willing to take part (see Appendix D2 for the consent form used for the LEA).

To support the recruitment of schools, a list was obtained from the ‘Numbers on Roll April 2007’ report published on the website of the target LEA. Primary schools were considered to be those attended by children across the 4-11 year age range, as opposed to infants schools or junior schools which are only attended by 4-7 or 7-11 year olds respectively. This was to further ensure a degree of SE uniformity across schools by eliminating the possibility that school policies contained age-specific considerations at odds with schools responsible for wider age ranges. Ten infants schools and eleven junior schools were excluded on this basis leaving 83 in the sampling frame. A stratified sample was created consisting o f quartiles based on FSM entitlement. As shown in Figure 8, schools in each quartile were arranged in ascending order of school size to ensure the sample was also representative of any logistical problems that pupil numbers might create for school meal provision.

Figure 8 Extract from the Sampling Frame

Ql

1 FSM School Size FSM School Size FSM School Size FSM School Size

2 0 74 29 12.1 60 107 33.3 52 78 42.4 1 160

3 6.3 3 159 20.0 68 118 24.8 25 122 72.3 58 166

School sizes ranged from 29 to 542 pupils with the modal value being in the range 101-200 pupils (Welsh Assembly Government, 2006b) There were 21 schools in Q l, Q2 and Q4 and 20 schools in Q3. The pilot school fell into Q l. The recruitment order within each quartile (Ql thru Q4) was determined using a random number generator provided by Research Randomizer (Urbaniak & Pious, 2007). Four sets of unsorted random numbers between 2 and 22 were simultaneously generated (see Figure 9).

These represented the line numbers in the leftmost column of the sampling frame shown in Figure 8.

Figure 9 Extract from the randomly generated recruitment order

Set 1 Set 2 Set 3 Set 4

7 7 16 16

3 19 6 15

19 6 9 14

22 8 7 2

14 17 2 20

8 11 3 21

9 4 11 10

17 13 17 7

Schools were approached for recruitment by identifying the next school in the recruitment order within Q l, then Q2, then Q3, then Q4, then Q l and so on to ensure a balanced spread o f SES across the participating schools. The third school recruited in Q3 used the same dining hall as another school on the same site which fell lower down the recruitment order in Q2. A pragmatic decision was taken to approach the headteacher of the Q2 school, even though this introduced a degree of imbalance between the four quartiles.

Sample size was controlled by theoretical sampling which allows the emerging theory to control the data collection which ends when saturation o f concepts occurs (Bryman, 2001). Although saturation began to occur during data analysis for the ninth school, Ql and Q4 remained under-represented at that time. Therefore, it was decided to recruit at least one more school from each to obtain a more balanced split across the four quartiles, and re-assess whether theoretical saturation had occurred. However, recruitment from Q4 continued to present more difficulties than the other quartiles.

Therefore, another Q4 school was recruited via a more targeted approach based on high FSM entitlement and its location within a city centre. This strategy was informed

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by the emerging data which had suggested that health promotion activity also found it hard to access Q4 schools, particularly in what was described as the ‘southern arc’ of the city. It was considered important to assess whether such a school would yield previously undiscovered concepts. As it did not, data collection ended at this point.

Table 14 shows a profile o f the numbers of schools that declined participation across the four quartiles, together with those that remained in the sampling frame after theoretical saturation. Five schools were classified as declining after repeated attempts to contact the headteacher via telephone and/or e-mail were unsuccessful. Delaying recruitment due to further attempts to establish contact was regarded as too risky for the recruitment pipeline. The first three schools were recruited in September 2007 and a pipeline of 2-3 schools undergoing the consent procedures was maintained throughout.

Table 14 Numbers of schools declining or not approached

No o f Schools Ql Q2 Q3 Q4 TOTAL

Declining 4a 3 2 a 8 17

• Head teacher not contactable 1 0 0 4 5

• Impending/ongoing school inspection

1 1 1 1 4

• Research burden too heavy 1 2 0 1 4

• No provision for school meals 1 0 0 0 1

• Other 0 0 1 2 3

Not approached 15 14 17 10 55

a One headteacher in each o f these quartiles consented for information obtained during recruitment to be included

The final sample included eleven schools whose characteristics are shown in Table 15.

Table 15 Characteristics of schools in sample shown by socio-economic quartile

Quartile 1 FSM range 0 - 6 .3

Quartile 2 FSM range 7.0-- 18.2

Quartile 3 FSM range 20.8 -3 3 .9

Quartile 4 FSM range 35.0- 77.9

FSM Size3 Uptake b FSM Size3 Uptake b FSM Size3 Uptake b FSM Size3 Uptake b

1.5 325* 52% 8.1 370 61% 27.0 267 46% 38.4 284 44%

1.1 208 48% 15.7 230 48% 22.0 104 45% 43.6 183 50%

7.0 168* 60% 35.2 170* 56%

10.3 107 70%

NOTES

FSM = percentage fiee school meal entitlement used as a proxy for socio-economic status Schools marked * were not members of the Welsh Network of Healthy Schools Scheme 3 Pupils on roll

b Percentage uptake o f school meals (paid and free)