your child's school is part of the project “Schulen Gurgeln” ("gargling schools").

The aim of the project is to enable all schools to take part in regular PCR gargle tests from autumn 2021 onwards and thus to put up an even more secure protective COVID-shield. This should keep schools open as safely as possible, even if the COVID-19 infection situation changes again. For a successful implementation of this protection from autumn onwards, a test phase is required, which will be scientifically accompanied.

In the course of this test phase, it is important to receive information on how the students are coping with the gargle and whether there are still things that should be improved. To do this, we will conduct two short online surveys (one end of May, one end of June) and ask you to allow your child to participate in them. 

Participation in the online surveys is of course voluntary. You can decide at any time that your child will no longer take part. You don't have to say why.

If you allow your child to take part, they will receive the information regarding participation in an age-appropriate language at the school. Your child can then decide for themselves whether or not to take part in the online surveys.

We ask your child to fill out two questionnaires on their smartphone, laptop, or computer. Most of the time this will take place at school and will take about 10 minutes to complete. 

Your child participates with a code, their own name is nowhere mentioned. Your child creates this code themselves at school. 

We'll keep this code until the second survey is over. In this way, we can combine the answers in the first and second questionnaires and identify changes. After the second survey, the codes of all participants will be replaced by a sequential number. The data set is thus completely anonymized (nobody can then see who gave which answers).

You or your child, therefore, have no longer than one month after the second survey to write us an email and request the deletion of the data. If you have not understood something or would like to know something more precisely, send us an email: schulengurgeln.forschung@univie.ac.at

Many Thanks!

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christian Korunka
Univ.-Prof.in Dr.in Barbara Schober
(on behalf of the scientific support team)