Can attitudes be coded? Can change in attitude be quantified? Can change in behavior be quantified? If attitude and behavior can be (even arbitrarily) quantified, how can changes or shifts be measured? How can those measures be applied to analyze shifts over time? How can that analysis be applied in engagement and outreach efforts for public health or policy issues?

I propose a Talk Session discussing the issues surrounding how to map, quantify, and analyze attitudes toward meat consumption across ethnic cultures. What factors are at play between ethnic cultures surrounding attitudes toward meat consumption? What are the differences in quantity, quality, type of meat consumed? How do you quantify or code quality of food in America? How do you track changes over time in meat consumption in ethnic cultures? What factors determine that — age of a people as individuals, education on health, change in economic status, or a cultural shift?

Ideally if I were a programmer I would like somehow to apply these to a digitally interactive time-lapsing map of some kind to identify the most effective ways to engage various cultures about various public health and ethics issue, one being health quality and source of meat in America. In order to have data to input, though, the first step would be to identify all the possible issues at play with understanding why and how different cultures correlate to choices about meat, and then quantifying and coding those across time for a quantifiable content analysis.

I would love input from anyone, but especially those experienced with quantified content analysis, public health, cultural attitudes and behavior, and computer programmers (to discuss whether my later idea of applying these to a map of the United States that can highlight different cultural communities in different parts of the country, corresponding attitudes and/or behaviors, time lapses, and then somehow layering all these on, is even plausible).