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Good morning everyone,

We are two undergraduate students completing our final year project, building on a previous students survey study. It is not usual practice for undergraduate projects to receive funding, and no formal funding arrangement exists for this project. We will however be entering participants into a draw to win a £25 amazon voucher, which will be paid for out of our supervisors’ budget. We have received ethics approval from the University of Exeter Ethics Committee (track A). This study is being conducted within the department of psychology, and our primary interest is to understand things from the users perspective. It is not our intention to deceive or otherwise misrepresent participants, quite to the contrary, we would like to ask direct open questions and report the answers in our final year project.

We are building on the excellent work of Jenny Saxby, also an undergraduate who completed her project last year. Jenny’s paper is in the process of being published, which can be a lengthy process. As such I am unfortunately not at liberty to distribute it, however I see Jenny every week and will express your wishes to receive feedback on her study, I am sure she will be happy to do so. The survey methods deployed in the previous study were only able to capture a limited amount of information on vaper identity. It is our intention to extend this work by conducting one to one in depth interviews, asking about peoples’ perceptions of vaping, how it has helped behaviour change and health benefits related to vaping. Our broad research question is 'what is the content of the vaper identity?'. As to what we hope to find, we are only seeking to report the experiences for vapers. We've found a lot of research making opposing claims about the safety and efficacy of e-cigarettes, this is not our primary concern. The research that engages users in order to gain their opinions is sparse, however, as you're no doubt aware. We are interested in capturing the voice of users, and will be using a technique called thematic analysis, to allow concepts and themes to arise from the interviews. We will therefore not be using statistical analysis for this study, or any quantitative methods. Obviously no work is truly unbiased, but it is common practice when using a qualitative approach such as this, that researchers attempt to acknowledge their biases and accept that they will shape the work, so that readers can bare this in mind when evaluating research for themselves.

I can see that the major concern of members here is that our research may produce yet more negative results regarding vaping. I think this would be extremely unlikely, given that we are essentially asking dedicated vapers to tell us what they think, and how vaping has improved their life. I believe anything that can help people improve their lives is worthwhile, as long as it’s not hurting others. I am personally neither for or against vaping, but I am open minded and think anything that is making positive changes to improve people’s lives can only be a good thing. I am studying this subject because I have a genuine desire to know what people think and feel, I am not personally interested in proving anything one way or another.

Regarding the Daily Mail article, I am sure it will come as no surprise that Dr Mewse has been misrepresented. I can only urge members interested in knowing more to read Dr Mewse’s published papers. Dr Mewse has never worked in the capacity of Addiction Counsellor, only ever as a lecturer. Dr Mewse has reiterated her wish to challenge the bad press that vaping is getting. She believes vaping to be a great harm reduction technique and it is the only thing that helped her to quit smoking after 45 years of never being able to.

With regards to external organisations, funding, adoption etc, I hope the above has put these to rest. To summarise, this is a small scale final year undergraduate project, two ladies and a wonderful vaping supervisor who would like to get some grounded knowledge from other people who vape.

we were hoping to have 16 interviews completed by the end of January, however we have had technical problems and very limited response via vaping shops, where we have been attempting to recruit. We are now hoping to complete 14 interviews by the end of February, in order to allow time for transcription and thematic analysis. My colleague Victoria and I would be really grateful for any help.

Yes, of course, it might help knowing that. I have a car so can travel to participants homes to fit around work potentially, however I am restricted by childcare issues and also fuel costs. As we are an undergraduate research project, there is very limited/non existant funding. My research partner Victoria has more time but doesn't drive. We are hoping to fill the number of participants needed in the Exeter area for this reason. 

We are aiming very much for a qualitative in depth, 'data rich' approach. We feel this is best acheived by meeting face to face for the best quality of communication. I admittedly use skype frequently for personal use, but this is a small study and we really want to focus in on individual experience. When people are at home using skype or facetime there are often distractions, that and we like to meet new people in person!