Take Part

This page contains all the information you need to know before signing up.

This information is also repeated in the sign-up form - if you'd like to skip straight to that, please click here:


What do I need to know before agreeing to take part?

  • This project may result in your child eating more fruit and vegetables, and consuming fewer high-energy snacks such as chocolate, crisps and biscuits
  • You and your child will be asked to try out a healthy eating app at home for a couple of weeks
  • During two meetings with a researcher (30 minutes to 1 hour each), you will also be asked to complete some additional activities (questionnaires for parents, quick games for children)
  • You will receive £10 in Amazon vouchers at every meeting
  • The order of activities will be random – this means that some people will receive the app in the first session, and some people will receive the app in the second session
  • We will ask you about your child’s eating habits (e.g., favourite foods) and related behaviours, and we will ask you to give us feedback about our app
  • You will be invited to an optional telephone or face-to-face interview a few weeks after starting to use the app. If you complete an interview, we will make an audio recording – like all activities in this project, this is entirely voluntary

Are there any risks if I take part?

  • A very small number of people have said that seeing the pictures of food in the app made them hungrier and have food cravings – this doesn’t happen often, but we need you to be aware of this before we begin
  • Nobody has reported any technical issues or damage as a result of downloading our app (e.g., viruses). The developers of our app (PsyNovigo) have put measures in place to protect against this, and other antivirus measures exist at the market level (e.g., in the GooglePlay store). However, there is always some risk associated with downloading any app (e.g., hackers) and so we need you to be aware of this before we begin

What are my rights as a participant in this project?


Here is some general information associated with taking part in any university research project. Don’t worry if it sounds a bit formal, this information is here to inform you of your rights as participants and to reassure you that we will protect any information you share with us:
  • You have the right to leave the project at any point, and you do not have to give us a reason why (we will ask you to provide feedback but this is voluntary)
  • You can skip as many questions or activities as you like, without having to give us a reason why – all aspects of this project are entirely voluntary
  • Any contact details or identifying information you give us (e.g., names) will be stored in a password-protected file on an encrypted laptop owned by the University of Exeter and your personal details will NOT be shared with anybody
  • Your answers to our questionnaires/activities will NOT be stored in the same file as your personal information (e.g., your name). Instead, we will use an anonymous ID code so that nobody else will know that these answers belong to you and your child. In order to help us understand whose answers are whose, we will keep a record linking your ID code to your personal details but this will all be stored safely in a separate, password-protected file on an encrypted laptop owned by the University of Exeter to make sure that nobody outside of the research team can work out whose answers belong to who
  • If you decide to take part in an interview, these will be audio recorded on a password-protected phone. The recording file will then be immediately transferred to a password-protected, encrypted laptop owned by the University of Exeter and deleted from the phone. These recordings will be written up into transcripts, and any information revealing your identity will be removed. The recordings will NOT be shared with anybody but excerpts from the transcripts may be published in an academic journal
  • Anonymous data (e.g., survey answers that do not allow you to be identified, written interview reports) will be shared with other researchers in the future (for example if we publish our results in a scientific journal) but nobody will have any way of identifying you or contacting you


If you have any questions or concerns before starting the study, please email us on kidshealthyeatingproject@exeter.ac.uk and we would be happy to chat.

If you would like to get started now, please click the link below to fill in a quick questionnaire so that we can check if you are eligible to take part.