Consumer Evaluations of Pre-Packaged Foods that Systematically Vary by Front-of-Pack Label, Health Claim, Price and Healthiness

• Register: ANZCTR
• Last refreshed on: 13 January 2020
• Main ID: ACTRN12616000626460
• Date of registration: 16/05/2016
• Prospective Registration: No
• Primary sponsor: Curtin University
• Public title: Consumer Evaluations of Pre-Packaged Foods that Systematically Vary by Front-of-Pack Label, Health Claim, Price and Healthiness
• Scientific title: Consumer Evaluations of Pre-Packaged Foods that Systematically Vary by Front-of-Pack Label, Health Claim, Price and Healthiness
• Date of first enrolment: 19/02/2016
• Target sample size: 2004
• Recruitment status: Completed
• URL: https://anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12616000626460.aspx
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: Purpose: Prevention; Allocation: Non-randomised trial; Assignment: Other;

Countries of recruitment

Australia

Contacts

• Name: Dr Zenobia Talati

• Name: Dr Zenobia Talati

Key inclusion & exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria: Participants must be aged over 10 and currently reside in Australia.
Exclusion criteria: Demographic quotas based on age, sex and location will be used. Participants will be excluded if the quota bracket which they belong in has been filled.


Age minimum: 10 Years
Age maximum: No limit
Gender: Both males and females

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

Obesity;Coronary heart disease;Hypertension;Type 2 diabetes;
Obesity
Coronary heart disease
Hypertension
Type 2 diabetes

Public Health - Health promotion/education

Intervention(s)

The intervention will involve presenting participants with hypothetical images of food packs that have been manipulated on the following attributes: healthiness (3 levels), front-of-pack label (4 levels), health claims (4 levels), price (3 levels) and food type (4 levels). All attributes will simultaneously appear in each hypothetical food pack image but the level of each attribute will vary across images. The attributes will be fully crossed with each other resulting in a pool of 576 total possible images (i.e. 3 x 4 x 4 x 3 x 4 = 576). Each participant will be exposed to 8 images that will be drawn pseudo randomly from the larger pool with the constraints that each participant be exposed to 2 of each type of front-of-pack label and 2 of each food type. Each attribute is described in detail below.

Front-of-pack label:
Contains a control condition and 3 levels: no label, the Daily Intake Guide, Multiple Traffic Lights, Health Star Rating. Each participant will be exposed to all 4 levels of this attribute (i.e. they will be presented with 2 packs of each label type) and will act as their own control.

Food type:
Contains 4 levels: corn flakes, cookies, pizza, yogurt. Each participant will be exposed to all 4 levels of this attribute (i.e. they will be presented with 2 packs of each food type).

Health claims:
Contains a control condition and 3 levels: no claim, nutrient content claim, general level claim, higher level claim. Across all participant exposures to images, a quarter of the exposures will come from each of the 4 levels of the health claims attribute.

Price:
Contains 3 levels: cheap, moderate price, expensive. Across all participant exposures to images, a third of the exposures will come from each of the 3 levels of the

Primary Outcome(s)

Perceived healthiness of the product, assessed using a questionnaire designed specifically for the study.
[After exposure to each hypothetical product pack image.]

Amount of the product considered desirable/appropriate to eat, assessed using images from an image bank (Blechert, J., Meule, A., Busch, N. A., & Ohla, K. (2014). Food-pics: an image database for experimental research on eating and appetite. Eating Behavior, 5, 617. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00617).
[After exposure to each hypothetical product pack image.]

Intention to purchase the product, assessed using a questionnaire designed specifically for the study.[After exposure to each hypothetical product pack image.]

Secondary Outcome(s)

Overall perception of the product (e.g., perceived tastiness, quality), assessed using a questionnaire designed specifically for the study.[After exposure to each hypothetical product pack image.]

Secondary ID(s)

None

Source(s) of Monetary Support

Australian Research Council

Ethics review

Status: Approved
Approval date:
Contact:

Curtin University Ethics Committee