Water drinking behaviour: exploring the motivations and situational contexts

There is no existing literature that provides a cohesive understanding of the motivations that underlie people's water drinking behaviour. Water is essential nutrient for human health and survival and yet it is an understudied area. Most of the research is focused on the motivations for drinking sugar and sweetened beverages (SSB) or alcohol. Due to the possible negative physical and psychological health impacts SSB and alcohol can have on individuals, drinking habits literature tends to focus on these products and ways to intervene and prevent their consumption. Water is therefore an important but very understudied concept within health research.
Due to lack of prior research on water motivation it is appropriate to take a qualitative approach to this study. A review of the insight that qualitative research has had in the healthy consumption literature illustrated that knowing the benefits of certain food or drinks sources can lead to researches using these benefits to inform motivations. In doing this, other important though less health centric motivations can be missed due to the 'top-down' approach to survey designs. By utilising a qualitative approach people's water motivation can be informed both theory and people's lived experience.
This research aims to explore the motivations that underlie water drinking behaviours and how people represent drinking water within memory. I will conduct semi-structured interviews during which participants will be asked questions regarding different aspects of their water drinking behaviour. These questions will cover the following topics such as: their daily drinking habits (not including alcohol), situations in which they drink water and situations in which they could drink water but drink something else.
This study will aim to conduct semi-structured interviews with approximately 60 people. This priori sample size was determined by assessing the maximum number of interviews possible within the current research project time frame. Note that this sample size is an approximation as actual sample size can only be determined once the research process has begun. Data collection will stop when data/thematic saturation is reached (i.e. the point where no new and meaningful information is being generated from interviews). Researchers will meet periodically throughout the data collection period in order to assess saturation and discuss whether more interviews need to be conducted.
The data collected will be analysed using thematic analysis as outlined by Braun & Clarke (2016). This analysis will be informed by the grounded theory of desire in line with a critical realist approach. Due to this the analysis will be mainly deductive in nature, although inductive coding will also occur to allow for any deviant cases to be considered. One researcher will do the initial transcription, coding and theme generation. Once this process is complete two researchers will discuss the appropriateness of the themes outlined and any changes will be made.
This research will help inform future quantitative research on water drinking behaviour and intervention efforts to promote water consumption.