Abstract

RAMIREZ, Guillermo; VASQUEZ, Maura; LANDAETA-JIMENEZ, Maritza  and  HERRERA, Marianella. Patterns of food purchases in Venezuela using contingency tables three-way. An Venez Nutr [online]. 2016, vol.29, n.1, pp.11-17. ISSN 0798-0752.

Multiple and diverse research in nutrition field have as the main objective, to collect and to analyze statistical data on the purchase and consumption of food. An example of these studies is the National Standard Living Conditions Survey for Venezuelans (ENCOVI), conducted in 2014 by a team of researchers from the Universidad Católica Andres Bello, Simon Bolivar and Central de Venezuela, and the Bengoa Foundation. This paper presents a statistical analysis of three-way contingency tables in order to analyze the information in the food section of ENCOVI 2014. The studied variables are: purchase pattern (1 to 5), socioeconomic class (low, medium and high) and city size (small, medium and large). The strategy was to go step by step evaluating the overall independence, partial independence and conditional independence between these variables and then apply a binary correspondence analysis to explain the plausible associations. It was found that buying patterns are associated with socioeconomic status and population density of the town of residence of families. The lower class of medium-sized cities showed a high preference of cereal and fat with important lack of animal proteins such as white and red meats, dairy products and low purchase of fruits, vegetables and legumes. The middle and upper classes do not differ substantially in their buying intention, maintaining a better balanced diet, but still a low apparent consumption of vegetables, fruits, legumes, milk and eggs was observed.

Keywords : Purchase pattern of foods; national survey of living conditions; three way table; Venezuela.

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