Children and young people\u2019s experiences of completing mental health and wellbeing measures for research: learning from two school-based pilot projects

Ola Demkowicz,Rosie Mansfield,Kim Burrell,Jessica Deighton,Emily Stapley,Helena Miles,Daniel Hayes,Emma Ashworth,Anna Moore

doi:10.1186/s13034-020-00341-7

Abstract

BackgroundIn recent years there has been growing interest in child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, alongside increasing emphasis on schools as a crucial site for research and intervention. This has coincided with an increased use of self-report mental health and wellbeing measures in research with this population, including in school-based research projects. We set out to explore the way that children and young people perceive and experience completing mental health and wellbeing measures, with a specific focus on completion in a school context, in order to inform future measure and research design.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 133 participants aged 8–16 years following their completion of mental health and wellbeing measures as part of school-based research programmes, using thematic analysis to identify patterns of experience.FindingsWe identified six themes: Reflecting on emotions during completion; the importance of anonymity; understanding what is going to happen; ease of responding to items; level of demand; and interacting with the measure format.ConclusionsOur findings offer greater insight into children and young people’s perceptions and experiences in reporting on their mental health and wellbeing. Such understanding can be used to support more ethical and robust data collection procedures in child and adolescent mental health research, both for data quality and ethical purposes. We offer several practical recommendations for researchers, including facilitating this in a school context.

Highlights

In recent years there has been growing interest in child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, alongside increasing emphasis on schools as a crucial site for research and intervention
We offer several practical recommendations for researchers, including facilitating this in a school context
Facilitating informed participation Findings offer insight into several issues and misinterpretations that may arise when children and young people (CYP) engage with participant information, which can influence their experience of the participation process

Summary

Introduction

In recent years there has been growing interest in child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, alongside increasing emphasis on schools as a crucial site for research and intervention. Informant discrepancies between reports of CYP and their parents, once seen as attributable to differences in “accuracy”, are more commonly thought to reflect differences in perspective, with CYP offering valid and important insights into their own health [11,12,13] This reflects an increased emphasis on the voice of CYP in research and policy, with a “no decision about me without me” approach frequently adopted [14,15,16,17,18]. There have been questions regarding the extent of impact of asking about sensitive topics; for instance, Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al [9] encouraged a distinction between temporary distress in relation to completing measures and the unlikely event of lasting psychological harm

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion