Doctors Caitlin Notley and Sharon Cox highlight from the outset: “Taking part is completely anonymous and voluntary. Your data will not be linked to your company.”
They add: “We are exploring how vape shops adapted their usual service (e.g., moved online), if at all, during the covid-19 outbreak. We are interested in this because we would like to create an understanding of how vape shops can adapt to meet the needs of different smokers. However, many companies may not have been able to adapt, and it is also important to capture the impact that covid-19 may have had on vape shops. To date, there is no national survey on this topic.”
They are surveying staff from vape shops in England in order to develop a picture of how the landscape has changed to the services provided. In particular, they are interested to discover “what types of specific changes were made for vulnerable groups, how social distancing was managed as well as the general impact on the ‘health’ of the company.”
Everybody who works in a vape store is being invited to contribute. They add: “Taking part will take less than 10 minutes and is anonymous, (and) you do not to answer every question. Your participation is voluntary, and you are free to withdraw at any time.”
All the information collected about you and your company will be kept strictly confidential and will only be shared with members of the research team. Personal and organisational details will not be linked to the data or any other information you provide. The final anonymised dataset will be kept for at least 10 years. Fully anonymised data may be shared on academic open access platforms to ensure transparency, aid peer review and allow others to make use of important data for re-analysis.
The anonymous results of the study may be shared with researchers, public health bodies, charities and other researchers, and may be published in open access journals and spoken about at conferences.
Questions about the study can be addressed directly by emailing Dr Caitlin Notley [link] or Dr Sharon Cox [link].
Related:
- Cross sectional survey of English Vape Shop practice during the COVID-19 outbreak – [link]
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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