Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of expanding the sample size for the Food Standards Agency's Food and You 2 survey to a minimum of 10,000 households.

The Food Standards Agency currently has no plans to increase the sample size for the Food and You 2 Survey. Each biannual wave of fieldwork contains a sample size of 4,000 households, with 2,000 in England, and 1,000 in each of Wales and Northern Ireland. This provides sufficient accuracy at a 95% confidence level for the survey’s key estimates. The random probability sampling approach, by which households are randomly selected from the postcode address file, and use of weighting helps to ensure the results are representative of the population. Where greater accuracy is required, responses from multiple survey waves can be combined.

The higher survey delivery costs associated with a larger sample size outweigh the benefits from an increase in accuracy.