Cross-cutting social science research

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• GM free labelling: Exploring public responses to the labelling of GM food and the use of GM-free labelling

  Wednesday 9 January 2013

  This research explored UK consumer responses to and views on GM labelling, including ‘GM-free’ labelling. The results from this research will inform UK policy on the use of ‘GM free’ labelling and ensure that the public’s views are reflected in our future discussions, at EU level, on GM labelling issues.

• Biannual public attitudes tracker survey

  Thursday 5 July 2012

  The Agency conducts a tracking survey among consumers, in order to monitor changes in consumer attitudes towards the Agency and food-related issues.

• Interviews exploring regulation cultures and behaviours

  Tuesday 17 January 2012

  A small number of in-depth interviews were carried out to add to the Agency’s understanding of what works to secure regulatory compliance. This was accompanied by a short paper on the implications of this research, and related research, for the Agency’s work.

• Citizens' Forums: Earned Recognition

  Monday 9 January 2012

  The national citizens’ forums explored consumers’ views about changes to food business regulation under the proposed 'Earned Recognition' scheme.

• Assessment of the COT uncertainty framework: a social science perspective

  Wednesday 5 October 2011

  This evaluation provides a social science perspective on a framework for assessing and communicating uncertainty produced by the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT). It evaluates existing research to consider how people understand uncertainty and how this affects the framework.

• Evidence review on regulation cultures and behaviours

  Wednesday 15 September 2010

  The Food Standards Agency commissioned a review of evidence to understand what works to secure regulatory compliance.

• Towards partnership: an analysis of the literature on organisational change

  Tuesday 13 July 2010

  This research seeks to deepen our understanding of partnership models in order to support the Agency's incident prevention policy makers developing more effective partnerships with key industry stakeholders.

• The 'Food and You' survey

  Tuesday 25 May 2010

  Food and You is a biennial survey that collects robust quantitative data to allow us to compare reported attitudes and behaviours between different groups within the population, and how these change over time.

• Food technologies: findings from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey

  Thursday 4 March 2010

  The report describes the findings from an FSA-funded module of questions on food technologies in the 2008 British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. The module also included four questions on genetically modified (GM) food that were asked in the BSA survey in 1999 and 2003.

• Public attitudes to emerging food technologies

  Thursday 26 March 2009

  A literature review to consolidate knowledge, from the UK and beyond, on public opinion about emerging food technologies, such as genetically modified food and crops, cloning, nanotechnologies, irradiation, functional foods, synthetic biology and novel food processes