The research involves human participants and so it was subject to ethical approval. This was obtained from the Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (form attached). 

The committee noted that it was "a simple survey using short and safe anonymous data".

The survey experiment involves a slight level of deception in that participants were not informed about the purpose of the research in advance, in order to avoid priming effects. However all participants received a full debrief after completing the survey (see debrief materials attached). The subject matter is not considered to be sensitive and so this withholding of information is highly unlikely to cause any adverse effects on participants.