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Front-of-pack labels (FOPLs) provide simplified nutritional information that aims to inform consumer choice and encourage reformulation. We conducted an online randomised controlled experiment on a representative British sample to test the effectiveness of FOPLs across a range of outcomes. The primary outcomes have been published; here, we present the secondary outcomes: the ability to rank the healthiest product and the time to complete the rankings by comparing the FOPL groups and a no-label control, as well as a descriptive analysis of the perceptions. Participants from the NatCen panel were randomised to one of five experimental groups (Multiple Traffic Lights; Nutri-Score; Warning Label; Positive Choice tick; no-label control). Six food/drink categories were selected (pizza, drinks, cakes, crisps, yoghurts, breakfast cereals), and three products were created with varying healthiness. The participants (analytic sample = 4530) were asked to rank the products in order of healthiness twice (baseline: no label; follow-up: experimental group label). Compared to the control, the probability of correctly ranking the healthiest product at follow-up was significantly greater for the N-S, MTL and WL across all products. The time to correctly complete the ranking was fastest for the N-S, PC and no-label control. The descriptive analysis showed that the FOPLs were perceived favourably, and especially N-S and MTL. The findings were supportive of the primary analyses, with those results suggesting that N-S performed the best, and then MTL.

BackgroundHesitancy about COVID-19 vaccination threatens comprehensive vaccination. It is important to examine vaccination acceptance when people are making real rather than hypothetical decisions, to identify whether targeted support is needed, and to identify implications for communications.MethodsCross-sectional online and telephone survey with probability-based sample (n=4,978) of British adults, conducted January-February 2021. Measures: socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, education, financial status), COVID-19 status, vaccine acceptance, trust in COVID-19 vaccination information sources, perceptions of vaccination priority groups, and perceptions of importance of second dose.FindingsAmong 5,931 individuals invited, survey response rate was 84%. COVID-19 vaccine acceptance (83%) was associated with increasing age, higher level of education and having been invited for vaccination. Acceptance decreased with unconfirmed past COVID-19, greater financial hardship, and non-White British ethnicity; Black/Black British participants had lowest acceptance. Overall, healthcare and scientific sources of information were most trusted. Compared with White British participants, other ethnicities had lower trust in healthcare and scientific sources. Those with lower educational attainment or financial hardship had lower trust in healthcare and scientific sources. Those with no qualifications had higher trust in media and family/friends. While trust was low overall in community or faith leaders it was higher among those with Asian/Asian British and Black/Black British ethnicity compared with White British participants. Views of vaccine prioritisation were mostly consistent with UK official policy but there was support for prioritising additional groups. There was high support for having the second vaccine dose.ConclusionsTargeted engagement is needed to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in non-White British ethnic groups, in younger adults, and among those with lower education, greater financial hardship and unconfirmed past infection. Healthcare professionals and scientific advisors should play a central role in communications and tailored messaging is needed for hesitant groups. Careful communication around vaccination prioritisation continues to be required.

Linked social media and survey data have the potential to be a unique source of information for social research. While the potential usefulness of this methodology is widely acknowledged, very few studies have explored methodological aspects of such linkage. Respondents produce planned amounts of survey data, but highly variant amounts of social media data. This study explores this asymmetry by examining the amount of social media data available to link to surveys. The extent of variation in the amount of data collected from social media could affect the ability to derive meaningful linked indicators and could introduce possible biases. Linked Twitter data from respondents to two longitudinal surveys representative of Great Britain, the Innovation Panel and the NatCen Panel, show that there is indeed substantial variation in the number of tweets posted and the number of followers and friends respondents have. Multivariate analyses of both data sources show that only a few respondent characteristics have a statistically significant effect on the number of tweets posted, with the number of followers being the strongest predictor of posting in both panels, women posting less than men, and some evidence that people with higher education post less, but only in the Innovation Panel. We use sentiment analyses of tweets to provide an example of how the amount of Twitter data collected can impact outcomes using these linked data sources. Results show that more negatively coded tweets are related to general happiness, but not the number of positive tweets. Taken together, the findings suggest that the amount of data collected from social media which can be linked to surveys is an important factor to consider and indicate the potential for such linked data sources in social research.

Linked survey and Twitter data present an unprecedented opportunity for social scientific analysis, but the ethical implications for such work are complex—requiring a deeper understanding of the nature and composition of Twitter data to fully appreciate the risks of disclosure and harm to participants. In this article, we draw on our experience of three recent linked data studies, briefly discussing the background research on data linkage and the complications around ensuring informed consent. Particular attention is paid to the vast array of data available from Twitter and in what manner it might be disclosive. In light of this, the issues of maintaining security, minimizing risk, archiving, and reuse are applied to linked Twitter and survey data. In conclusion, we reflect on how our ability to collect and work with Twitter data has outpaced our technical understandings of how the data are constituted and observe that understanding one’s data is an essential prerequisite for ensuring best ethical practice.

In light of issues such as increasing unit nonresponse in surveys, several studies argue that social media sources such as Twitter can be used as a viable alternative. However, there are also a number of shortcomings with Twitter data such as questions about its representativeness of the wider population and the inability to validate whose data you are collecting. A useful way forward could be to combine survey and Twitter data to supplement and improve both. To do so, consent within a survey is first needed. This study explores the consent decisions in three large representative surveys of the adult British population to link Twitter data to survey responses and the impact that demographics and survey mode have on these outcomes. Findings suggest that consent rates for data linkage are relatively low, and this is in part mediated by mode, where face-to-face surveys have higher consent rates than web versions. These findings are important to understand the potential for linking Twitter and survey data but also to the consent literature generally.

Front of pack food labels (FOPLs) provide accessible nutritional information to guide consumer choice. Using an online experiment with a large representative British sample, we aimed to examine whether FOPLs improve participants’ ability to identify the healthiness of foods and drinks. The primary aim was to compare ability to rank between FOPL groups and a no label control. Adults (≥18 years), recruited from the NatCen panel, were randomised to one of five experimental groups (Multiple Traffic Light, MTL, Nutri-Score, N-S, Warning Label, WL, Positive Choice tick, PC, no label control). Stratification variables were year of recruitment to panel, sex, age, government office region, and household income. Packaging images were created for three versions, varying in healthiness, of six food and drink products (pizza, drinks, cakes, crisps, yoghurts, breakfast cereals). Participants were asked to rank the three product images in order of healthiness. Ranking was completed on a single occasion and comprised a baseline measure (with no FOPL), and a follow-up measure including the FOPL as per each participant’s experimental group. The primary outcome was the ability to accurately rank product healthiness (all products ranked correctly vs. any incorrect). In 2020, 4504 participants had complete data and were included in the analysis. The probability of correct ranking at follow-up, and improving between baseline and follow-up, was significantly greater across all products for the N-S, MTL and WL groups, compared to control. This was seen for only some of the products for the PC group. The largest effects were seen for N-S, followed by MTL. These analyses were adjusted for stratification variables, ethnicity, education, household composition, food shopping responsibility, and current FOPL use. Exploratory analyses showed a tendency for participants with higher compared to lower education to rank products more accurately. Conclusions: All FOPLs were effective at improving participants’ ability to correctly rank products according to healthiness in this large representative British sample, with the largest effects seen for N-S, followed by MTL.

The European Social Survey ERIC (ESS) experimented with the world’s first cross-national probability-based online panel, named CRONOS, recruited off the back of ESS Round 8. One of the biggest challenges of the project was the coordination and harmonised management of the sample in the three different European countries taking part in the project (Estonia, Slovenia and Great Britain. In particular, the need to restrict and enable access to panellists’ information for subsets of the staff whilst also facilitating the correct level of access at the central level was identified as a challenge. Currently, there is no “off-the-shelf” commercial software that is flexible enough to manage the complexity of a cross-national sample. For this reason, ESS ERIC in collaboration with Sciences Po decided to develop a sample management system (abbreviation SMS) capable of dealing with the complexity highlighted above as part of the SSHOC project. This document describes the technical specification of a sample management system for cross-national purposes, outlining the main functionalities of the system and describing the user roles related to access rights to panellists’ contact information., This deliverable has been accepted by the European Commission on - 03 November 2020

ObjectivesTo examine public views on COVID-19 vaccination and consider the implications for communications and targeted support.DesignCross-sectional study.SettingOnline and telephone nationally representative survey in Great Britain, January to February 2021.Participants4978 adults. Survey response rate was 84%, among the 5931 panellists invited.Main outcome measuresSociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, education, financial status), COVID-19 status, vaccine acceptance, trust in COVID-19 vaccination information sources, perceptions of vaccination priority groups and perceptions of importance of second dose.ResultsCOVID-19 vaccine acceptance (83%) was associated with increasing age, higher level of education and having been invited for vaccination. Acceptance decreased with unconfirmed past COVID-19, greater financial hardship and non-white British ethnicity; black/black British participants had lowest acceptance. Overall, healthcare and scientific sources of information were most trusted. Compared with white British participants, other ethnicities had lower trust in healthcare and scientific sources. Those with lower educational attainment or financial hardship had lower trust in healthcare and scientific sources. Those with no qualifications had higher trust in media and family/friends. While trust was low overall in community or faith leaders, it was higher among those with Asian/Asian British and black/black British ethnicity compared with white British participants. Views of vaccine prioritisation were mostly consistent with UK official policy but there was support for prioritising additional groups. There was high support for having the second vaccine dose.ConclusionsTargeted engagement is needed to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in non-white British ethnic groups, in younger adults, and among those with lower education, greater financial hardship and unconfirmed past infection. Healthcare professionals and scientific advisors should play a central role in communications and tailored messaging is needed for hesitant groups. Careful communication around vaccination prioritisation continues to be required.

This article reports on a U.K. workshop on social media research ethics held in May 2018. There were 10 expert speakers and an audience of researchers, research ethics committee members, and research institution representatives. Participants reviewed the current state of social media ethics, discussing well-rehearsed questions such as what needs consent in social media research, and how the public/private divide differs between virtual and real-life environments. The lack of answers to such questions was noted, along with the difficulties posed for ethical governance structures in general and the work of research ethics committees in particular. Discussions of these issues enabled the creation of two recommendations. The first is for research ethics committees and journal editors to add the category of ‘data subject research’ to the existing categories of ‘text research’ and ‘human subject research’. This would reflect the fact that social media research does not fall into either of the existing categories and so needs a category of its own. The second is that ethical issues should be considered at all stages of social media research, up to and including aftercare. This acknowledges that social media research throws up a large number of ethical issues throughout the process which, under current arrangements for ethical research governance, risks remaining unaddressed.

Linking survey responses and the electoral register is a core part of data collection in political science. This experiment shows that there is no difference in consent rates if the motivation for data linkage is changed to a more truthful one. This is encouraging for researchers of registration and turnout; survey respondents do not object to their data being linked for checking potential errors in their reporting. It also is consistent with the idea that consent to link survey data to information from the electoral register is driven by a consideration of the linkage itself, rather than being overly reliant on question wording. This view is supported by the additional finding that there is also no difference in the rates of opt-out consent between two alternate motivations. The second finding at this stage is that far fewer people opt out of consent than refuse their consent when they are asked to opt in.

Some researchers consider most social media communications as public, and posts from networks such as Twitter are routinely harvested and published without anonymization and without direct consent from users. In this chapter, we argue that researchers must move beyond the permissions granted by ‘legal’ accounts of the use of these new forms of data (e.g., Terms and Conditions) to a more nuanced and reflexive ethical approach that puts user expectations, safety, and privacy rights center stage. Through two projects, we present qualitative and quantitative data that illustrate social media users’ views on the use of their data by researchers. Over four in five report expecting to be asked for their consent and nine in ten expect anonymity ahead of publication of their Twitter posts. Given the unique nature of this online public environment and what we know about users’ views pertaining to informed consent, anonymity, and harm, we conclude researchers seeking to embark on social media research should conduct a risk assessment to determine likely privacy infringement and potential user harm from publishing user content.

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have profound and enduring effects on mental health but, until we have data, we will not know its form, extent, duration or distribution. An appropriate public health response to mitigate and manage mental health sequelae is likely to require significant diversion of resources. In the post-COVID environment, such decisions must be underpinned by reliable information: policymakers, commissioners and services need to know both the scale of need and who is most vulnerable. A recent position paper in this journal1 highlights “an immediate priority is collecting high-quality data on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the whole population and vulnerable groups”. This should be a clarion-call for governments to fund, and researchers to gather, timely, high-quality population mental health data which represents the true need arising from the pandemic., Unfunded