Survey: Food Budget for international students from LCC

On 22nd July 2009, a survey was carried out among 30 International Students from Pressessional English Course at LCC. The purpose of the survey was to discover the food budget for International Students so that information can be of help to coming classes.
The survey was directed to current International Student. There were six questions, (all of them involved multiple choices).

The first question concerned preference about eating outside in a restaurant or cooking by oneself. The next four questions were all concerned with food expenses. At length, the last one was related to the food expenditure as a percentage of the total weekly budget.

The main findings were as follow. “Cooking by yourself” was the most popular answer, selected by 67% of the students. The other 33% prefers to eat outside. There was a clear trend in spending between £20 to £50 weekly in groceries, 77% of the interviewed chose this answer. 53% of the students usually eat out one to three times a week, followed by 4 - 6 times a week option, chosen by 30%.

On average of how much they spend when eating out 53 % pointed out that they spend between £11 and £20 per meal. Followed by 30% with £10. Nobody chose the £21 or more option. Including groceries and eating out, 40% of the students used to spend between £30 and £50 weekly, followed by over £71, chosen by 23% and £51-£70 range, selected by 20%. Only 17% chose less than £30. Finally, 64% of the students spend between 31% and 50% of their weekly budget on food.

If any conclusion is given from the survey, they are perhaps, as follows.
International Students from the Pressessional English Course at LCC have been thinking in a considerable food budget before they came to London. Most of the meals are done cooking by themselves. On the other hand, the students like a couple of meals out during the week. Probably they would eat out more often but the budget would increase too much. On average one of their meals out is the third part of the money that they spend weekly on food.