Funding for this research was provided by:
Projekt DEAL
Article History
Received: 19 March 2020
Accepted: 15 October 2020
First Online: 28 October 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: At the time of data collection the researchers’ institutions had no ethics committee. The institutionalization of ethics approval for social sciences projects has only just begun in Germany. Nowadays the University of Erfurt provides an ethics committee that examines the ethical aspects of a research project if the study participants are expected to face certain risks (such as depictions of violence) or if the participants are not fully informed about the aims and procedure of the study. Data protection aspects are also examined. In the present case, with the topic of nutrition app use, no particular risks for the participants were to be expected and they were fully informed about the aims and procedure of the study. Consequently, if the study were conducted nowadays, no ethics approval would be demanded by our institution. Participation in our study was voluntary and respondents gave written informed consent before taking part in the study. Data were collected anonymously via a brief online survey. Hence, there would also be no data protection concerns as no personalized data was gathered.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.