Understanding the influences on young people’s mental health requires robust tools to measure their experiences.
Many of the teams have produced new questionnaires and measures to capture the nuance of young people’s lives, based on in-depth qualitative work with young people and robust testing.
Measures already produced and in development include
- #So.Me measure of young people’s social media experiences and how these relate to their mental health
- Digital Activities and Feelings Inventory (DAFI)
- Digital Insight and Agency Scale (DIAS), measuring young people’s agency in mitigating the negative impact of digital activities on their mental health
- Good Measure of adolescent sexual wellbeing
- Birmingham Advanced Mindreading Stories (BAMS), a measure of mindreading
- Youth Loneliness Scale (YLS)
- Nurture-U Student Wellbeing Survey
The U-Belong project has also examined different ways of measuring students’ social networks and how these relate to loneliness.