Recruitment for this project is now closed – Thank you for your interest
We want you to have all your questions answered about this research before taking part. We hope that we have covered the main questions you might have in this FAQ section and in the participant information sheet.
If you have any outstanding questions then do please feel free to send us an email: yourviews@bath.ac.uk.
Jump to a question:
Step 1: Fill out our consent form and our eligibility questionnaire which will be used to understand more about you or the child you care for. This should take around 10 minutes.
Step 2: Once the survey has been finalised, we will email you a link to the survey which you can complete for each new eating out experience.
Other possible ways of being involved:
Taking part in an initial workshop to help finalise the creation of the survey
Joining a private facebook group to engage with your fellow citizen scientists participating in this project
Participating in interviews at the end of the data collection to discuss your experience of being a citizen scientist
Taking part in a workshop at the end of the project to discuss the findings of the project
We are looking for any experience you may have for eating food prepared outside the home (both dining-in as well as take-away/pick-up experiences). This includes restaurants, cafés, pubs, coffee shops, fast food outlet, etc. It could also mean eating at a school, hospital, or a place of worship.
We are also interested in hearing about experiences when you planned to eat out - perhaps even arriving at the venue - but decided not to continue eating there for reasons related to your food hypersensitivity.
Within the survey you will be asked questions concerning your eating out experience following the different phases of the journey (starting with when you plan to eat out, once/if arriving at the venue, once/if you are seated, ordering your food, and once the food has arrived).
You will be asked multiple-choice questions as well as open-ended questions so you can describe your experience in more detail.
You will also have the opportunity to upload pictures (i.e.: the food, the menu, the receipts, etc.) to complement your answers.
No, you do not have to.
Firstly, your participation is completely voluntary and you can choose to exit at any point.
Secondly, the main component of your participation comes from completing the survey when you are eating food prepared outside the home. You can choose to fill out the survey as many times as you wish.
We have other parts of the project such as helping co-create the survey, participating in interviews after data collection, participating in the workshop at the end of the project, and joining the private Facebook group. All of which you can choose to participate in if you wish but do not have to!
If both you and a child you care for have a food hypersensitivity, please answer the questions according to your experience rather the experience of the child you care for.
Answer for the child that in your view has the most serious food hypersensitivity.
In terms of benefits of taking part – the information you provide will help us to understand people’s experiences of trying to avoid allergens when they are eating out. The Food Standards Agency are interested in this so they can help to protect the consumer from health risks posed by food hypersensitivity. They also want to understand how feasible it is that citizen scientists can provide them with useful information about this.
In terms of the risks of taking part – we don’t want you to do anything different than you normally do. We don’t want you to change your normal patterns of eating out at all!
To take part in this study, you must be a UK resident over the age of 16 and either have a food hypersensitivity yourself or care for a child under the age 16 who has a food hypersensitivity.
We define food hypersensitivity as food allergy, intolerance, or coeliac disease which causes adverse reactions leading you to avoid particular foods.
If you wish to take part in the study, please go ahead and access the consent form by clicking on the link below.
Please be aware that once you have consented, you will immediately be redirected to an eligibility questionnaire so that we may know a bit more about your allergy status.
This should take around 10 minutes to complete altogether, so please do make sure you have the time to complete this before proceeding.
