Soil testing on Permaculture and Conventional farms

You are invited to join a project which is studying awareness of soil quality factors and procedures of management. The survey will aim to understand the ways in which your croplands are managed.

Soil qualities can be important indicators for crop care and environmental sustainability. This survey is designed to understand areas of cropland in the UK that test soils and if any other protective measures are used for sustainable horticulture and agriculture. The information obtained through this survey will help to understand participants' viewpoints in sustainable farming in relation to the types of soil quality tests undertaken.

Data Use and Storage
The survey is fully anonymous for all participants from Permaculture Association, Farmers Forums, and Facebook groups. Personal data used from six farms will only be used for sample postal delivery and survey link sharing. After this has been completed, emails will not be stored and will be deleted from the contacts list of the university email used ensuring participants' safety. This survey has an ‘other’ tick box which can be used if the participant would prefer not to say any questions asked within the survey. The data will be processed to obtain information regarding soil testing and management. The information used will be part of a final year project. Also, it may feedback to the university and to various teaching committees, teaching and learning workshops/presentations, and contribute towards teaching/learning research publications. All data will be anonymised, and password protected in computer files. Electronic files will be stored as password-protected files on the computer of Jonathan Mitchley in the Harborne Building at the University of Reading, for 5 years.

Ethical Approval
This project has been subject to ethical review, according to the procedures specified by the University Research Ethics Committee, and has been given a favourable ethical opinion for conduct.  I will not be sharing the farm and email addresses with anyone. Inline with the Data Protection for Researchers, I will dispose of the sensitive information once I have completed the dissertation. I will be following these guidelines: Informing participants about how their data will be used, shared, and retained, as well as their rights. Minimising the use of personally identifiable data wherever possible. Having in place safeguards to protect the data of research participants. If participants have concerns regarding their data protection they can email me directly to have their data removed from the dissertation results if they no longer wish to participate in the study.

Completed Questionnaires
Participants should submit the questionnaire to Gemma Bruno via google forms which will automatically create an Excel spreadsheet with both the questions and answers. All survey data will be kept on password protected files and stored electronically for 5 years. The surveys will be completed remotely via the Google Forms website.

Contact:
Participants are welcome to contact us if they have any questions or if they wish to obtain copies of the research results.

Student email:  g.bruno@student.reading.ac.uk
University Supervisor:  Jonathan Mitchley j.mitchley@reading.ac.uk