Dimension

Sample responses

Surface structure

1) What were your feelings when you first picked the booklet up to read?

Colorful; family togetherness; family eating healthy and exercising; Family eating together and doing physical activity with kids; It’s not too thick; I thought, we got some black people on the book.

2) What are your thoughts about the front page and title of the booklet?

Shows a lot of families, shows families exercising; It shows families together; Positive outlook; Encouraging, the title encourage what we can do; Eye-catching; Good title; We Can, so the title tells us if we all try hard enough, we really can; What is the President’s slogan, Yes, we can—if the President is saying we can do it, we can do it.

Decrease the amount of blue background; Enlarge the picture, the blue covers more than the picture; Graphics in the middle should be larger, the blue will throw you off;

title needs to be at the top of the book; be bolder; Write in black instead of white.

3) What are your thoughts on the pictures used in the booklet? Did they encourage you to read further? Are any changes needed?

Appropriate, no changes needed (all agreed); to me they did a good job, a very good job.

Show families it’s a good idea to spend time together, get away from T.V. and video games; Parents preparing healthy meals; …so they encouraged their kids to be involved in eating healthy foods.

Colorful; food is colorful and looks like it’s just waiting for you to just eat it off the plate;

Good choices because we as Black Americans, we need to promote good eating habits and physical activity and diet and parents eating together with their children and spending time;

Shows different activities they could do. If someone picked up the book and couldn’t read, they could look and see them riding a bicycle or playing ball or whatever without reading;

Changes:

Comparison of good and bad… show unhealthy and come back with healthy;

Pictures of children in local activities (riding horses);

More pictures of black families eating together and doing physical activity with kids;

More pictures of minorities; more pictures of families from the parish;

Families working in gardens;

Celebrity pictures;

Pictures of yams, cornfields.

4) What are your thoughts on the size and style of the letters used? Suggest changes if needed.

“Appropriate;” “very good”

“No changes to font; you can read with or without glasses; good, anyone can read it;”

“I like where the title was done in color and the information was done in another color”

5) How would you describe the reading level of the booklet, for example, “difficult-to- read?” “not easy-to-read?” “hard-to-read?” “easy-to- read?” Was there a section that you found too technical or difficult or hard to understand? If so, which section? What changes are needed?

I think a 6^th grader can read it; it was very understanding; and easy to read and to the point; not to technical; simple and basic, as far as the pyramid and everything broken down;

I like the way they left the website so you could go to the website and get other information

Deep structure

6) What topics were most interesting and useful to you?

Downside of overweight;

Energy balance;

Handy guide to calories burned in common activities;

Encourage healthy weight;

BMI information;

Parents as role models;

The calorie requirements;

Portion size information;

I thought the part was interesting where the family can help encourage a healthy weight;

Nutrition label information…that might encourage parents to be conscious of looking at the labels and reading them more when they’re purchasing;

I like them all.