Methodological innovation

Loneliness in the digital world: Co-developing smartphone-based research to examine how online social experiences impact adolescent mental health

Prof Heather Whalley and her team at the University of Edinburgh are exploring a method of data collection that involves collecting brief snapshots of data several times a day through smartphone apps – a method called Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA).

They are working with young people (12-15 years) to produce guidance about using this approach with this age group. They are testing this method in a study of how young people’s loneliness and wellbeing are impacted by online and offline social acceptance and rejection. The data they generate will be shared with other researchers via the Generation Scotland study.

Advancing measurement of gender and sexual dimensions of adolescent mental health and wellbeing: Addressing a missing link

Professor Kirstin Mitchell and her colleagues at the University of Glasgow are creating tools and resources to help mental health researchers and those who provide mental health services to ask the right questions to understand links between mental health and sexual wellbeing, and to ensure that young people's concerns are properly understood. This will include developing and testing a new measure of adolescent sexual wellbeing, and designing resources for researchers, ethics committee members and schools on research on these topics.

The automated coding of expressed emotion to enhance clinical and epidemiological mental health research in adolescence

The ‘five minute speech sample’ (FMSS) explores the way that parents talk. Data from the FMSS can provide useful information about children’s risk of future mental health difficulties, but it can be complex to code. Professor Johnny Downs and colleagues at Kings College London are developing a new way of analysing these data through automated coding. This project will make the FMSS much easier to use, opening up many more possibilities for its use in studies.

A new methodology linking interactional and experiential approaches, and involving young people as co-analysts of mental health encounters (the ‘'Agency-in-Practice' project)

Conversations about mental health can be analysed in different ways. Interactional approaches focus on how the conversation unfolds: who says what, and where does that lead? Phenomenological approaches focus on how people make sense of their experience of the conversation. To overcome limitations with both methods and to gain more powerful insights, Dr Michael Larkin and his colleagues are bringing these methods together to explore young people’s experiences of seeking help for their mental health.

Young people will be involved as co-analysts, extending the traditional ways in which young people are involved in mental health research. Outputs from the project will enable qualitative researchers to capture a much fuller picture of young people's experiences, and to work much more equitably alongside young people.

MEN-MINDs Project: Co-producing change for better mental health for adolescent young men at the margins

Young men are less likely than young women to be diagnosed with common mental health disorders, but are at greater risk of poor mental health outcomes such as substance misuse or suicide.  This may reflect underlying rates of mental health issues, but also other factors such as help-seeking behaviours, the availability of mental health supports and how services engage and work with young men.

Certain groups of young men are more likely to experience exclusion, discrimination and poor mental health outcomes, such as young men who get in to conflict with the law, who identify as LGBTQI+, or who have migrated to the UK. Dr Nina Vaswani and colleagues are working with marginalised young men to understand the barriers to taking part in mental health research and to co-design more engaging research methods for the young men to explore masculine identities, mental health and mental health supports with their peers. 

Developing a measure of social understanding for 15- 24-year-olds that is appropriate, fair, valid, and theoretically motivated

The ability to understand other people’s mental states, known as ‘mindreading’ is an important aspect of people’s ability to build, manage and maintain social relationships, which predicts loneliness, later mental health difficulties and other struggles. Young people’s social worlds change dramatically during adolescence, and Professor Ian Apperley’s team is developing a reliable, valid measure of mind-reading for this age group that works equally well for different demographic groups.

They are also developing an open system for automatic coding of young people’s responses. With findings explored in workshops with educators, researchers, employers and young people, this will lay the groundwork for understanding the causes and consequences of young people’s mindreading in places of education and work, helping to identify how these settings can support this ability in young people.

#So.Me: Development and validation of the Social Media Experience measure: Using objective assessment and adolescents' experience to inform its development

The increased use of social media among young people has attracted the attention of the public, the media and the government, and has led to growing concerns about its impact on young people's mental health, wellbeing and levels of loneliness. Research on this area is however relatively new and with mixed evidence, and recent evidence suggests a weaker link between social media use and mental health, and the importance of considering its benefits as well as risks.

There are flaws in the measures and methods that researchers use to explore young people’s social media use. Dr Margarita Panayiotou and her colleagues will co-develop, with young people, a smartphone app and a comprehensive and freely available self-report measure of social media experience that will be appropriate for young people, drawing on both their actual social media use, and their subjective experiences of it.

Capturing loneliness across youth: Co-production of a new developmentally sensitive scale

Loneliness is common among young people and has become a public health issue worldwide. Yet many current questionnaires measuring youth loneliness were developed without the input of young people raising questions about their authenticity and validity. Professor Jennifer Lau and her team will work with young people aged 10-24 years from diverse backgrounds to get a better picture of what loneliness means to young people, and use these findings to create and pilot-test a new questionnaire that reflects loneliness as it is experienced from early adolescence to early adulthood.

The questionnaire will be disseminated through workshops for those interested in using it with their client groups or to evaluate programmes and interventions that are designed to tackle youth loneliness. We will also develop infographics and animations for practitioners and policymakers.

The time of their lives? Developing Concepts and Methods to Understand Loneliness in Students

University students are surrounded by peers. They often live with friends and have many opportunities to socialise. Yet loneliness is a growing concern among university students, and young people report high levels of loneliness. Dr Nicola Byrom and colleagues will explore the concept of loneliness, working with students to co-create accurate and sensitive ways of representing their experiences.

Exploring the history of student experience, investigating the links between loneliness and other concepts (e.g. sense of belonging, social connections and expectations), and developing new tools to explore differences in loneliness, the team will develop a strong theoretical framework and a set of measures that will facilitate future research.

Long-Term Modelling Tools for Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing Research

Research into the impact of interventions  to prevent and manage adolescent mental health problems typically only follows young people up for one to three years, making it hard to tell  how long effects will last, what the long-term economic and social consequences will be in later life, and how this will vary between young people in different circumstances.

Professor Richard Cookson and his team are addressing this by developing a better approach to long-term modelling of intervention effects on adolescent mental health and wellbeing. They will develop a computer programme predicting the long-term consequences and public cost impacts of short-term effects on adolescent health and wellbeing from age 11 to 17, for different kinds of adolescents in different family, neighbourhood and school environments. They will test this in three example studies, and make their tool readily available to other researchers, who can use and refine the approach in future studies.

Co-producing a framework of guiding principles for engaging representative and diverse cohorts of young people in biological research in mental health

Biological research, such as studying blood, saliva or brain scans, can help us understand how the things we experience in the world can make physical changes to our mind, body and brain. This type of research needs improving as many young people - especially those from disadvantaged or minority groups - do not participate or drop out of such studies, meaning the results do not represent all the young people in the UK.

Professor Paola Dazzan and her colleagues,  together with young people will develop a ‘Framework of Guiding Principles’ on how young people prefer to be approached about research, what would make them interested to stay involved, what roles they would like to play in the research team, and what benefits they would like to see from taking part. Disseminating and implementing the Framework will support researchers to carry out better, more inclusive research in the future.

Creating Research Ecologies to Advance Transdisciplinary lEarning (CREATE) on arts-based programs through the study of adolescent loneliness

Arts-based mental health research, using creative practices like music, theatre, dance, drawing, poetry is enjoyed by many young people and can bring new insights and understanding about adolescent mental health in ways that traditional, often adult-led, research methods cannot. There is untapped potential to improve understanding of mental health if we could bring arts-approaches together with science and youth perspectives but this is held back by many research barriers.

Professor Paul Cooke and his colleagues will address these barriers by bringing young people, artists and scientists together in Living Labs, using the topic of young people’s loneliness to stimulate discussions about methods and interpretation. They will bring their findings together in a hub of resources including teaching tools, frameworks, glossaries, analysis methods and good practice guides, which will be disseminated widely to those who are researching at the intersection of arts, science and youth voice.

SOCITS: A SOCial sITuational Systems approach to measuring and modelling influences on adolescent mental health

Most mental health survey research asks questions about how individual young people feel in general. Dr Mark McCann and his team are developing a method that takes better account of the important situations in young people’s lives, the different social interactions that happen in those situations, and the connections between the ‘system’ of people around a young person.

The team will test this SOCial SITuational Systems or SOCITS approach in a study conducted by young co-researchers on how situations in secondary school might affect stress, loneliness, mental health and attitudes. Their findings will be used to develop a survey and a computer-generated artificial school that can be used to test out what would happen if situations in school were changed. They will write up the method so other research teams can use SOCITS in other studies.