The data pieces that I collected and analyzed came from both flashbak.com and YouTube. From the 1960s until approximately the 1990s, I analyzed poster advertisements that promoted a variety of menu changes and value meals. After the 1990s, many of the advertisements produced by McDonald’s were television commercials, which began to tell more of a story and look into the lives of McDonald’s consumers.
The sampling frame that I looked at was McDonald’s advertisements and commercials over a consistent period of time, from the 1960s to the present. My goal was to examine how McDonald’s advertising has changed based on public health campaigns and compare this to the fluctuation in child obesity rates over the same time period. My sampling method included collecting commercials from YouTube and vintage posters found on various photo sites. Data from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website on youth and adolescent obesity rates since 1960 until the present was used to supplement the research I found from the advertisements.
The quantitative content analysis I conducted involved analyzing the varying frequencies of certain actions and behaviors of people within McDonald’s advertisements. I created codes for the frequency of certain phrases or actions that I expected to see reoccurring in the advertisements. Examples of some codes include the frequency of seeing hamburgers versus apple slices, or the number of times the word “quality” was used. Qualitatively, I examined the deeper meaning within the advertisements and searched for reoccurring themes using mostly the same codes from my quantitative data code sheet. I noticed three main themes from my qualitative analysis, the most prominent theme being the switch from promoting a sedentary lifestyle to an active and balanced lifestyle.
I supplemented this analysis by examining CDC data to see if there were any spikes in child obesity rates, while looking at McDonald’s advertisements from those years to see if their commercials show any type of response towards these increasing rates.
