Meet
the god
of the sea

The Restroom Confidence Score runs from 0 to 100. Higher means you're more comfortable using restrooms away from home. It comes from three parts, weighted 40, 35 and 25.

We set those weights ourselves when we built the survey. They haven't been tested yet. If the answers show they're off, we'll change them.

• 40%Questions 3–4

  How often you hold it

  What you actually do. It counts most because it's the hardest evidence and the easiest to answer honestly. It's also how the class defines the problem: avoiding a restroom 3 or more times a month.

• 35%Questions 5–8

  What gets in your head

  Sound, smell and splash are what the product works on. This sits just under behavior, because someone can worry a lot and still go.

• 25%Question 9

  What it costs you

  Skipped events, cutting back on food, stress beforehand. It's a checklist, so it can only count boxes. Part of it overlaps the other two, so a smaller weight keeps the same signal from counting twice.

Points for each answer

Special cases

• No problem at all. If you go whenever you need to (Q3) and never held it (Q4), you skip ahead to the product questions and score 100.
• Missing answers. A blank Q3, Q4 or Q8 counts as the middle value, so it doesn't push the score either way.

Where you land

1. 80–100Calm waterYou go when you need to go. Restrooms aren't running your day.
2. 55–79A little chopMost days you're fine. A few places or situations still make you wait.
3. 30–54Rough waterHolding it has become part of your routine, and it's shaping where you go and what you eat.
4. 0–29Deep waterThis is costing you real things: plans, food, and a fair amount of stress.

A worked example

Someone answers "It depends" (Q3), held it 6–10 times (Q4), picks two places (Q5), two concerns (Q6 and Q7), a 4 on worry (Q8), and two behaviors (Q9).

Part	Math	Result
How often you hold it	(50 + 20) ÷ 2	35
What gets in your head	25 × 0.5 + 64 × 0.25 + 50 × 0.25	41
What it costs you	2 behaviors	45
Total	35 × 0.40 + 41 × 0.35 + 45 × 0.25 = 39.6	40, Rough water

What doesn't count

Age, gender, how you cope now, and every question about the product (Q12–Q16) are left out. The score only measures the problem. If liking the product moved your score, we couldn't use it to ask the real question: do people who have the problem want this?

How the class will decide

The score is what you get back for taking the survey. The go/no-go decision rests on the raw answers and these thresholds:

What we're testing	Question	Go ahead if…
The problem exists	Q4	25% or more held it 3+ times in the past month
The problem is emotional	Q6	Sound or smell is the top concern for the largest group
The problem is serious	Q8, Q9	20% or more rate worry 4–5 and pick at least one behavior
People want the solution	Q12	40% or more of those with the problem pick 4–5
People would pay	Q14	Most of the interested group picks a price at or above the target
Real intent	Email	10% or more leave an email for a sample

Ignoring the urge to poop is a recognized cause of constipation. Most of the harm comes from making a habit of it, not from holding it once. For toddlers, holding it during potty training is a well-known cycle that's hard to break.

• 1 in 7university students avoided public toilets because of social anxiety, in a study of 714 studentsKuoch et al. 2021
• 22%of 482 toddlers refused to poop on the toilet for a month or more during trainingTaubman, Pediatrics 1997
• 14%of adults worldwide have chronic constipationSuares & Ford 2011
• 9.5%of children worldwide have functional constipationKoppen et al. 2018

Adults and students

Risk	How solid	Source
Constipation from ignoring the urge	Well established	NIDDK, NHS
Slower gut transit from holding it on purpose	Limited. In one small study, 12 men who held it for a week went from 8.9 to 3.7 bowel movements a week.	Klauser et al. 1990
Fecal impaction	Well established after long-term constipation, mostly in older or immobile adults	Cleveland Clinic
Hemorrhoids	Indirect. Straining and constipation cause them; no study looks at holding directly.	NIDDK
Anal fissures	Indirect. Hard stools tear the skin.	AAP
Gas and bloating	Plausible, based on a clinician's opinion	Cleveland Clinic
Less rectal sensation	Limited. A real condition, but its cause isn't pinned down.	Burgell & Scott 2012
Pelvic floor dyssynergia	Limited. Described as "acquired," but holding isn't named as a cause.	Cleveland Clinic

Toilet anxiety affects an estimated 6–35% of adults to some degree (Knowles & Skues 2016). In the student study, avoidance went up when other stalls were occupied.

Toddlers and young children

• Holding it drives most childhood constipation. The American Academy of Pediatrics says it usually comes from withholding and often starts during toilet training (HealthyChildren.org).
• Pain, then fear, then holding. A painful poop makes a child hold the next one, which makes it harder and more painful. Breaking that cycle is the core of treatment (NHS England).
• Soiling. Liquid stool can leak around a hard mass. It isn't on purpose (Cleveland Clinic).
• Bladder problems and UTIs are more common in constipated children (2018 review).
• Toilet fears are real. Pediatricians describe children afraid of being sucked in when it flushes (AAP) or of falling in (Cleveland Clinic).
• Splash-back hasn't been studied. No published source names it. The parent survey is how we're trying to find out.

Claims we won't make

• That holding it causes colon cancer. A 2013 review found no link (Power, Talley & Ford).
• That toxins build up and poison you. That's a myth (Müller-Lissner et al. 2005).
• That holding it once hurts you. The research is about doing it as a habit.
• That splash-back makes children constipated. Nobody has shown that.

This is background for a class project, not medical advice. If you or your child has ongoing pain, constipation or soiling, talk to a doctor.