The practical and ethical challenges of identifying, accessing and obtaining school canteen transactional data for public health research.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The purpose of the study was to investigate the feasibility of using existing data to better understand what pupils purchase during the school day and its nutritional quality. This report highlights the ethical challenges experienced in attempting to obtain anonymised school canteen transaction data for public health research.

Methods

Semi-structured interviews were conducted before a variety of approaches were tried to recruit secondary schools for the study via purposive sampling.

Results

Barriers encountered included (i) identifying data providers, (ii) identifying data owners, (iii) data sharing and (iv) engaging stakeholders. The approaches taken to mitigate each of these barriers and subsequent ethical issues are summarised so that future researchers a

SUBMITTER: Gilmour A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11622285 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature