Bones Ahoy!: A Pirate's Quest to fortify stronger skeletal awareness in a pop-up Escape Room adventure

This dataset supports the public engagement project “Bones Ahoy!: A Pirate’s Quest to fortify stronger skeletal awareness in a pop-up Escape Room adventure.” The project explored the use of immersive, gamified escape room experiences as tools for informal STEM engagement, with a specific focus on improving public understanding of bone biology and osteoporosis prevention.The data were generated during a series of bilingual (English and Welsh) pop-up escape room events delivered across multiple public venues in South Wales, including festivals, shopping centres, and community spaces. The activities were conducted as part of public engagement events and were open to members of the public of all ages. In total, more than 200 participants aged 2 to 82 took part.The intervention, titled Science Pirates: The Bone Health Edition, used a pirate-themed narrative to engage participants in puzzle-solving activities related to bone cell function, skeletal health, and the role of physical activity in maintaining bone strength. The experience combined physical puzzles, QR code–enabled digital learning content, and a hands-on “build-your-own-bone” model. The escape room was designed to be inclusive, accessible, and low risk, and was delivered by trained facilitators.Data were collected to evaluate participant engagement and perceived learning outcomes. These include anonymised post-activity survey responses assessing self-reported understanding of bone biology, aggregated voting data on preferred formats for science engagement, and escape room completion time data (mean completion time 7.6 minutes). No identifiable personal data were collected. All datasets were anonymised prior to deposit, and any sensitive or unnecessary metadata were removed.The deposit also includes extended materials required to contextualise, interpret, and reproduce the intervention. These materials document the educational content, engagement design, and ethical procedures used during delivery. Ethical documentation, including the Participant Information Sheet and the Verbal Consent Script used by facilitators, is provided to ensure transparency and accountability, particularly in relation to the participation of minors.Together, these files allow researchers, educators, and public engagement practitioners to understand why, when, and how the data were generated, how the intervention was designed and delivered, and how the findings reported in the associated publication were derived.Underlying dataSurvey Data - Anonymised post-activity survey responses, aggregated voting data, and anonymised escape room completion timesFiguresFigure 1-9 - Manuscript figures (JPEG)Supplementary Figure 1-3 - Escape Room Completion by participantsEngagement materialsDecoding Sheet English - Participant decoding sheet (English)Decoding Sheet Welsh - Participant decoding sheet (Welsh)Example Filled Decoding Sheet - Anonymised example responseDid You Know Posters - Educational postersEvent Promotional Posters and Flyers examples - Bilingual promotional materialsStudy designLogic Model - Logic model of intervention inputs, activities, and outcomesEthics documentationParticipant Information Sheet - Participant and guardian informationVerbal Consent Script for Facilitators - Verbal consent procedureCardiff REC letter - formal confirmation this is PPIE, not research, signed by the Committee Chair