Join the Study

Join Our Study

Our Invitation to you

You are being invited to take part in a research project. Before you decide it is important for you

to understand why the research us being done and what participation will involve. Please take

time to read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. Ask us if

there is anything that is not clear or if you would like more information. Take time to decide

whether or not you wish to take part. Thank you for reading this.

Project Purpose

The CONFESS study aims to explore two things. The first is how COVID-19 has changed the practice of religious worship in the UK. The second is to understand how much aerosol is generated when speaking, chanting, or singing in religious worship and how much that changes when a person wears a face mask. This might help scientists work out the risk of transmitting COVID-19 when people sing or chant in religious worship.

The project will require you to fill in an online questionnaire. If you live in London, you might also be asked to come to UCL on one or two occasions. You can choose not to do this and just enrol in the questionnaire part of the study.

Why Me?

You may have found out about our study by word of mouth, by email or by a targeted advert on social media. We are looking for people who engage in communal religious worship in the United Kingdom who can tell us how things have changed for them since the COVID-19 pandemic started. We are particularly focusing on people who live in London who can also come to UCL to take part in our experiments of aerosols (droplets) produced when they speak, chant or sing. We will include anyone who lives in the UK, attends religious services and is over the age of 18.

Do I have to take part?

It is up to you to decide whether or not to take part. If you do decide to take part, you will be be asked to download a copy of this information sheet to keep. You will also be asked to sign an online consent form. You can withdraw at any time without giving a reason. If you decide to withdraw after you have submitted the survey, you will not be able to ask for the survey data to be withdrawn but you will be able to have your personal details deleted from our system. However, if you decide to withdraw after you have done the experiments, you will be asked what you wish to happen to the experimental data you have provided up that point.

What will happen to me if I take part?

The study involves three steps. If you live outside London, you will only take part in Step 1

Step 1: You will complete an online questionnaire. We will ask you about changes in your religious practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will ask you for some personal details including whether you are at high risk of developing a bad case of COVID-19 if you catch it.

If you live in London:

We will also ask whether you are prepared to travel to UCL to do some experiments. We will choose all the people who are not at high risk from COVID-19 and who live near to UCL. If you live near enough and you are prepared to come to UCL for our experiments, we will randomly decide whether to invite you (in a similar way to flipping a coin), based on your age, sex, height and weight, ethnicity and religion.

Step 2: We will invite about 50 of the Londoners who take part in Step 1 to come to UCL for the first experiment. This will take less than 1 hour. If we invite you, you will come to a laboratory in our Engineering Faculty. We will ask you to say some words and to hum and sing a song. You will do this with and without wearing a face mask. We will video the area in front of your face using a high-speed camera whilst shining a bright laser light at this area. This will help us to see how many droplets you produce, how fast they move and possibly how big they are. We may also record you as you speak, sing or hum. We will protect you from the laser by placing a safety curtain between you and the laser. You will also wear laser safety goggles. You will need to stand up while you do the experiment. We will ensure that you are safe. We will conduct the research in accordance with legal laser safety rules and government safety guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will reimburse your travel expenses if you need us to.

Step 3: We will invite back a smaller number of people (about 12 in total) to repeat the experiment. This will probably be 1-4 weeks after the first time. This time, the setup will be almost the same, but we will ask you to wear different types of face masks and to speak, sing or hum for longer than in the previous step. This experiment will take up to 2 hours. Once again, you will wear laser safety goggles and stand up while you do the experiment. You will be able to sit down every so often if you need to. We will ensure that you are safe. We will conduct the research in accordance with legal laser safety rules and government safety guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will reimburse your travel expenses if you need us to.