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Article History

Received: 28 March 2017

Accepted: 20 March 2018

First Online: 27 March 2018

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The material this paper is based on was not originally collected as research material but as a survey anonymously mapping people’s opinion towards health related issues, to be presented to the Norwegian press, and due to this no approval from Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics was needed to collect the data. Kantar TNS Gallup that collected the data follows the Personal Information Act and the Data Inspectorate’s guidelines, as well as ESOMAR and Norwegian Market Association ethics rules and industrial standards. Kantar TNS is certified according to the standards ISO 9011, ISO 20252 MR and ISO 26362 by the Norwegian Veritas to ensure and comply with applicable laws regarding the collection and handling of personal information.As this anonymous survey did not request respondents to report any identifying information (name, date of birth etc) and does not aim to provide new knowledge about health and disease, it is not considered to be health research in Norway. Due to this, no approval from Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics was required to analyze the data for research purposes due to the following guidelines: “Use of other anonymous information and assessments of health conditions. Anonymous information means information in which names, personal identification numbers and other unique characteristics are removed so that data can no longer be linked to an individual (section 2 of the Health Registry Act)” [CitationRef removed, CitationRef removed]. As the anonymity of the participants was essential, consent to participate was given by filling in and return the online questionnaire.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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