2.7. The Surveys
sore throat, runny/blocked nose, sinus ache, fever, muscle ache, pain, cough, headache, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms
SORE THROAT, LOSS OF APPETITE
All the information gathered on the health status and behavior of trial participants was collected based on the online surveys. The surveys were delivered to participants with the EUSurvey tool (There were three types of surveys used in this trial: initial, daily, and weekly. The initial trial was devoted to obtaining data used for descriptive statistics, as well as the information helping to develop the overview characteristic of the tested population. Questions on medical history and dietary, as well as lifestyle, habits regarding period from delivery up to present time were included in this survey.The most important aspect for gathering data analyzed in our experiment was daily surveys. The daily survey questionnaire was brief (7 questions) and the main questions concerning the health status of participants were those about the severity of URTI symptoms, presence, and type of gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, as well as well-being status. The question about the presence and severity of URTIs symptoms offered a choice of four responses with the following scores: 0 points—no symptoms; 1 point—mild symptoms not influencing regular daily activity (sporadic sneezing and/or cough, mild sore throat, runny/blocked nose of low intensity—at least one of these symptoms with no fever); 2 points—mediocre symptoms reducing regular daily activity (cough, runny/blocked nose, pain in area of sinuses—at least one of these symptoms with body temperature < 38.0 °C); 3 points—severe symptoms incapacitating regular daily activity (Ist group of symptoms: persisting cough, runny/blocked nose of significant intensity, sinus ache, IInd group of symptoms: serious headache, muscle ache, skin sensitivity to touch, loss of appetite, thermic discomfort, fever of ≥38.0 °C—combination of at least one from the Ist group and two from the IInd group of symptoms).Additionally, also from daily surveys, the question regarding well-being contained a choice of four responses scored as follows: 3 points—perfect (cannot be any better); 2 points—good (all is okay, no complaints); 1 point—mediocre (feel passably, but could be better); 0 points—poor (something is not right, in a bad mood).This way, the numerical scales were created which allowed us to grade the intensity of such subjective parameters as severity of self-observed symptoms and well-being. The values obtained from each participant were summed up to create scores on these variables, analyzed as the overall result from the entire study as well as data broken down to various periods of the trial, i.e., days 1–45 (the initial supplementation period), 46–86 (no supplementation), 87–107 (second supplementation and 2 weeks follow-up).The most important question in our weekly surveys was about the number of days with any URTIs symptoms observed over the last seven days.