It is clear that, apart from email messages to request participation in a study, nutrition science could benefit from the replacement of conventional postal questionnaires with electronic questionnaires. This is comparable with the findings of the 'computer network' survey of Walsh et al. Electronic questionnaires cost less in time and money to administer. A scientist can produce a questionnaire that the respondent could fill in and return by email with a program like Microsoft Excel that captures the data into a spreadsheet for analysis. This could advance human nutrition as it would permit a greater throughput of samples and less error in re-keying data.
Email gives the scientists greater control over the logistics of questionnaire despatch.
Large mailshots of the same message are possible and most email packages allow the sender to confirm a message's delivery time and time of reading by the recipient. Email can not preserve the anonymity of the respondent. This may compromise the validity of electronic questionnaires although scientists could make assurances of confidentiality. In conclusion, there are significant uncertainties about the use of email as a research tool in nutrition science. Although it is likely that email users will become more representative of the general population over the next decade, I suggest that, at present, only very narrowly defined populations with protected access, i.e. individual email addresses, should be contacted using email as a research tool in nutrition.