The research process is a means of studying a health problems or topic in order to arrive at conclusions or make general statements about a particular area of health.

The health research process involves systematic procedures of gathering information to a well-defined problem. The research may seek to prove or disprove a hypothesis, collect new information or explore concepts. This issue focuses on one particular research process - the health survey and in particular food and nutrition surveys.

Food and nutrition surveys usually provide the following types of information:

• Description of food consumption patterns in a population;
• Amount of food available per person; and
• The nutritional status of different age groups.

In order to make sure that the findings are reliable, researchers must be clear about the problem to be studied or the research question. The specific target group and methods must be defined as well as the time frame for conducting the survey. It is critical to identify the resources (both financial and human) required for the survey very early and for the logistics to be carefully thought out and planned.

Careful planning based on well defined objectives make surveys an invaluable tool for providing information on food and nutrition issues in different population groups. Well executed surveys will also provide information to support evaluation of policies and programmes and thus prove to be a useful tool for researchers, policy makers and planners.