Food Standards Agency
Sunday 7 September 2008
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In its broadest sense, social science is the study of society and the manner in which people behave and impact on the world around them. It includes many different disciplines that concentrate on particular aspects of society or human nature, for example sociology, psychology, anthropology, social geography and economics.
Social scientists deploy a range of approaches to gathering evidence – from the collection and analysis of statistics, the collation of responses to questionnaires and interviews, to the systematic observation of human behaviour.
The Agency has traditionally supported scientific programmes of research based on the natural sciences (such as microbiology or toxicology), but there are a few examples of projects within our programmes that are already based in social science or contain some social science research content. Examples are the Low Income Diet and Nutrition Survey and the evaluation of 'Scores on the Doors' (schemes that provide food hygiene inspection information to the public outside food premises).
Research has also been carried out with consumers to support communication campaigns, such as the salt ‘Full of it’ campaign.
A significant new piece of policy evaluation currently underway is the independent study investigating comprehension and use of UK nutrition signpost labelling schemes. This is a multi-disciplinary study that combines nutrition science with an integrated programme of qualitative and quantitative social research methods.
The Agency is also developing a module of questions on public attitudes to innovative food technology for the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey – the 2008 BSA survey will be the first time the Agency has sponsored a module on this leading social attitudes survey. An innovative piece of social science research, also ongoing, is a methodological study investigating the potential of eye tracking technology as a behaviour research technique.
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