- FUNDED PROJECTS -

Projects Funded in Round 2

Our 2nd funding round closed in September 2020. See below for details of the exciting and innovative projects we supported!

  • Hacking the system: Young people’s views on the potential and risk of Internet of Things in their school

  • Delphi study with young people, families and professionals to prioritise focus, content and digital tools in the co-development of digital tools to support young people with long-term health conditions

  • Supporting children’s mental health through familial online relationships

  • Empowering pre-teens online through a digital ethics of care framework

  • Third Culture Kids’ Digital Environments and Mental Health

  • The negotiation of pleasure, risk and harm in young people’s digital lives: A scoping project on the mental health and wellbeing implications of online ‘transgressive’ behaviours

Hacking the System: Young people’s views on the potential and risk of Internet of Things in their school

Lead applicant: Dr Katherine Easton, University of Sheffield

Co-applicant: Dr Victoria Betton, Mindwave Ventures

Grant awarded: £26,762

Duration: 12 months


Project summary

The primary aim of the project is to understand young people’s (YPs) experience of the Internet of Things (IoT) specifically in a secondary school environment through two qualitative co-creation hacks.

The secondary aim is to share knowledge on this topic with a range of stakeholders and ultimately apply for follow on funding to progress practice in this area.

The project builds on previous experiential work where adult mental health (MH) service users explored IoT and created use cases and identified barriers. The outputs were a number of storyboards and an animation showing the vital importance of involving service users in the development and implementation of IoT solutions. The project was led by the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the University of Oxford through a Research England Connecting Capabilities Funded project, Pitch-In.

Main objectives:

  1. Undertake participatory work with YP who are affected by MH issues or who may, in turn, experience unintended negative consequences of the adoption of IoT in their school.

  2. Co-create ideal prototype IoT systems.

  3. Have an expert adult/youth panel appraise the system/s.

  4. Disseminate the findings as slide decks, blueprint, animation and an end of project webinar.


KEY FINDINGS & OUTPUTS FROM THE RESEARCH

 
 

A short animation highlighting the urgent need to have conversations with young people in schools about data collection and how that data can and should be used.

 

  • Including the voice of young people in decisions that will impact on their day to day life is vital to promote empowerment and a sense of control.

  • The young people that we spoke to were initially unaware of all of the ways that data about them, and from them, is being captured and used.

  • The young people we spoke to were capable of understanding complex digital processes relating to data capture and use.

  • The young people we worked with had creative ideas about the potential for technology to impact school life in positive and negative ways.

  • Using creative methods to explore ideas with young people can lead to insights that are not always evident when using more traditional methods such as surveys, interviews and focus groups

Delphi study with young people, families and professionals to prioritise focus, content and digital tools to support young people with long-term health conditions

Lead applicant: Dr Angeliki Bogosian, City, University of London

Co-applicants/partners:
Dr Kathleen Mulligan, City, Unversity of London
Dr Michelle Heys, East London NHS Foundation Trust, London, and University College London
Polly Livermore, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Suzy Gray, Great Ormond Street Hospital

Grant awarded: £9928

Duration: 12 months


Project summary

One in ten children will develop a long-term condition that limits their daily life substantially and demands extended care, supervision and self-management strategies. These conditions include diabetes, neurodegenerative conditions, cancer, sickle cell disease, asthma, and chronic pain, among others. Children and adolescents with long-term conditions have significantly higher rates of mental health problems compared to ‘healthy’ children. Chronic physical health concerns in young people also have a significant impact on parental stress and family functioning. The World Health Organisation calls for more research into potential interventions to support young people with a long-term condition. Little is known about the potential for digital technology to support good mental health for young people with a long-term condition.

Our overall aim is to prioritise the focus, content and tools with which to co-develop a digital intervention to support the mental health of young people with long term conditions. Our objectives are:

  1. (FOCUS) to identify and prioritise key mental health themes to be addressed.

  2. (CONTENT) to identify the most effective psychological techniques and interventions to be incorporated.

  3. (TOOLS): to identify and prioritise digital tools (e.g. website, mobile app, social media, virtual reality) with which to co-develop a mental health intervention.


KEY FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCH

  • Based on a literature review in the area of diabetes, asthma and epilepsy, we found that young people’s most reported psychological concerns include:

    • anxiety

    • depression

    • denial of having the condition

    • fear of medication side-effects

    • dealing with unsupported adults

    • desire to appear normal

    • poor sleep, social phobia

    • worry about the future and future complications

    • lack of confidence.

  • When we asked our expert panel (26 young people, 23 parents and 10 health professionals) to prioritise the above list, the top two most important psychological or emotional themes that young people with a long-term health condition may experience were:

    • Anxiety (44% of participants thought this was most important)

    • Wanting to appear ‘normal’ and the same as your friends/peers (39% thought this was most important)

  • 74% of the participants agreed that they would like an app as the digital technology used to provide support.

  • 75% agreed that they would like a mixture of one-on-one support (e.g. from health care professionals) and group support with peers

Supporting children’s mental health through familial online relationships

Lead applicant: Dr Rose Capdevila, The Open University

Co-applicants/partners:
Dr Lisa Lazard, The Open University
Dr Charlotte Dann, University of Northampton
Prof Abigail Locke, Keele University
Dr Sandra Roper, University of Bedfordshire
Sophie Linington, Parent Zone

Grant awarded: £28,640

Duration: 9 months

Project Summary
This project will underpin our research programme on supporting children’s mental health through familial online relationships. Within this broader trajectory, this proof of concept study will ask: How do young people make sense of their parents’/caregivers’ online sharing? Research has highlighted the critical role of everyday interactions and relationships in producing and maintaining nurturing environments that support children and young people’s development and mental health. Whilst research in the area of family digital practices is burgeoning, the focus has almost exclusively been on problematising children’s practices; when parents are the object of study, the focus has been primarily on ‘sharenting’, rights, ethics and privacy (Lazard et al, 2019). This proof of concept study will explore how young people’s experiences of well-being and mental health are affected by adult led social media practices, along with the affordances of different platforms, within the wider family ecosystem. Attention will be on supporting children’s mental health rather than addressing mental illness. The future research funding bid, underpinned by this pilot, will investigate the dynamics of family online practices, harnessing elements of existing online practices to support constructive and protective engagements within the family on and offline through the development of guidance and design principles.

Reference
Lazard, L., Capdevila, R., Dann, C., Locke, A and Roper, S. (2019). Sharenting: Pride, affect and the day to day politics of digital mothering. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 13(4), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12443.


KEY FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCH

  • This study has identified how notions of trust, privacy and permission were used by families to negotiate their relationships. Online and offline relationships were tightly interwoven. When children had seemingly good, trusting relationships with their parents, this was reflected in their discussion of their parent’s social media use with permissions varying dependent on relational trust. However, permission was also highly contextual and often changed at transitional points in the young people’s lives (e.g. move to secondary school or becoming a teenager). A recognition of these changes by the parents played back into the relationship of trust.

  • Different platforms were used differently by the families as expected with older members favouring Facebook and younger members using Snap Chat and TikTok. However, these different platforms were also associated with a different set of permissions that depended on age and audience where each family member had their own ‘territory’ so to speak.

  • The original design replicated the family interviews, conducted first, in the individual interviews to allow individuals to elaborate on or challenge points that had come up initially. While the order of the interviews to worked well, the research team decided that in future a different approach to exploring the same issues in the individual interviews would be preferred so it didn’t feel like ‘familiar territory’.

Empowering pre-teens online through a digital ethics of care framework

Lead applicant: Dr Michelle O’Reilly, University of Leicester

Co-applicants/partners:
Sarah Adams, University of Leicester
Diane Levine, University of Leicester
Simon Genders, Safeguarding lead, Leicester City Council
Ann Davey, Chief Executive officer, Pathway schools

Grant awarded: £17,659

Duration: 5 months

Project summary
Our preliminary research with 11-18-year olds led to a novel ‘digital-ethics-of-care’ conceptual framework which prioritises children’s autonomy, empathy and caring practices online for mental health promotion and positive behaviour (O’Reilly et al., 2020). Our Adolescent Advisory Group (n=12) suggested this framework is equally important for pre-adolescents.

Our overarching aim is to explore whether this interdisciplinary, flexible theory of moral conduct online can be adapted for 10-11-year olds. We focus our energies on schools/peers; in digital societies, schools need new tools to address social issues. Evidence shows disconnects between moral reasoning and behaviour behind screens (Flores & James, 2013), negatively impacting the mental health of users and recipients.

We have four objectives:

  1. Explore the relevance of the concept ‘digital-ethics-of-care’ to pre-adolescents.

  2. Scope the benefits and challenges of a paired interview approach with children as researchers, using online data collection tools.

  3. Test the feasibility of adapting co-production methods to an online space.

  4. Co-produce several story-based moral scenarios with children for teachers to use in education and for us to use for a later larger-scale funding bid.

This provides a toolkit of methods and co-produced scenarios that have been quality-assured for use in developing educational outputs for schools.

References
O’Reilly, M. (2020). Social media and adolescent mental health: The good, the bad and the ugly. Journal of Mental Health, 29(2), 200-206

Flores, A., and James, C. (2013). Morality and ethics behind the screen: young people’s perspectives on digital life. New Media and Society, 15(6), 834-852

KEY FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCH

  • Primary school children are regular users of the internet, social media platforms, digital technology, and internet mediated gaming. Some of this is technically not supposed to be used by children of this age.

  • Primary school children often own their own devices, and certainly have access to devices like tablets, phones, laptops and smart TVs.

  • Primary school children reported being regularly exposed to negative comments and content in that usage. They reported experiences of being upset by this.

  • Children reported that other children are often unkind to each other in the classroom and on internet mediated devices. They felt that online gaming could lead to arguments and conflict.

  • Children reported that they frequently witnessed or heard of their peers receiving unkind comments online.

  • Children reported that they thought it was important to support those who received unkind comments online and felt that teachers should help with that.

  • Children wanted to learn better coping strategies to manage unkindness online.

  • Children provided many suggestions for the storyboard and these were incorporated into the final design.

Third Culture Kids’ Digital Environments and Mental Health

Lead applicant: Dr Laura Cariola, University of Edinburgh

Co-applicants/partners:
Dr Kareena McAloney-Kocaman, Glasgow Caledonian University
Dr Billy Lee, University of Edinburgh
Moira Leslie, Royal Caledonian Education Trust
Katie Rigg, Council of International Schools

Grant awarded: £40,037

Duration: 12 months

Project summary
The term “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) describes children whose parents are in globally mobile employment, such as members of the armed forces, missionaries, and intergovernmental employees (Pollock & Van Reken, 1999/2009). TCKs accompany their parents, resulting in a transnational lifestyle that is constantly in flux. As such, TCKs tend to have unstable in-person networks with often only their parents as a constant in their lives. To maintain a sense of belonging and connectivity with their peers who share similar lived experiences, TCKs largely rely on digital technologies, including social media. Using an online-facilitated community-based participatory approach to better understand a largely under-researched youth population, we aim to answer the following research questions:

  • How do TCKs engage and negotiate the interplay between online and in-person support networks?

  • Specifically, how do TCKs use and experience digital technology differently to mono-cultural children?

  • How do TCKs perceive the risks and opportunities of using digital technology, and how can these risks be minimised and the benefits enhanced?

  • How do TCKs experience the relationship between their use of digital technologies and their mental health?

  • What training do families and professionals need to support TCKs’ safe use of digital technologies and positive mental health?

KEY FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCH

  • A literature review found that child migrants predominately use digital technologies in their everyday life for the following purposes: to maintain a sense of cultural identity and belonging by interacting with family and friends in their home country; to follow news in their home country; to practice linguistic interaction with cultural peer groups; to build and maintain co-cultural friendships; to source information within the school context; and entertainment and online gaming.

  • The results of the qualitative study identified that the internet enables TCKs to keep in touch with their friends during moves, and it also helped them to maintain their peer relationships over many years and over long geographical distances. Maintaining online peer-relationships evoked mixed experiences ranging from feelings of closeness and connectedness to feelings of loss due to the geographical distance and changes in the friendship dynamic. In contrast to older TCKs, younger TCKs ability to maintain contact with peers online after (multiple) relocations was often dependent on the mothers keeping in touch with the parents of the peers.

  • In relation to perceptions of online risks, the majority of parents were concerned about their children being contacted by strangers and exposed to upsetting or inappropriate material online. To mediate various online risks, parents adopted different parenting approaches. For example, parents who reflected an authoritarian stance tended to restrict online time and use parental control apps, whereas parents with a permissive stance stated they implicitly trust their children and relied on their children to report if they encountered something upsetting.

The negotiation of pleasure, risk and harm in young people’s digital lives: A scoping project on the mental health and wellbeing implications of online ‘transgressive’ behaviours

Lead applicant: Dr Bina Bhardwa, Birkbeck, University of London

Co-applicants/partners:
Prof Jessica Jacobson, Birkbeck, University of London
Gillian Hunter, Birkbeck, University of London
Prof Daniel Monk, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Emily Setty, Surrey University
Dr Mini Tatlow-Golden, The Open University
Fiona Lacey, YoungMinds
Young Advisors, YoungMinds

Grant awarded: £24,170

Duration: 9 months

Project summary
Our project is scoping study on young people’s online ‘transgressive’ behaviours, such as ‘sexting’, cyberbullying, accessing extremist and pornographic material, posting images of sexual activity and drug-taking on social media, and gambling. Covid-19 has seen an intensified ‘shift to the digital’, but young people’s perspectives on these changes and associated ‘new norms’, and the impact on mental health and wellbeing, are largely unknown. Critical of top-down, outdated, official narratives that construct binaries of online risk and opportunity, we recognise young people’s agency in negotiating pleasure, risk and harm in their digital lives.

We explored:

  1. Impacts of Covid-19 on online 'transgressive' behaviours.

  2. How young people variously draw and navigate boundaries between ‘healthy’/‘unhealthy’, ‘risky’/‘safe’, ‘moral’/‘immoral’, ‘illegal’/‘legal’, online behaviours; how conceptions of ‘fun’, ‘excitement’ and ‘pleasure’ intersect these boundaries.

  3. Young people’s views on policy, practice and legal responses to online ‘transgressive’ behaviours, and on the language and concepts used in digital safety information and education.

  4. How socio-structural factors (e.g. access to digital technologies and digital literacy) shape online behaviours.

  5. We plan to use the findings and methodological insights arising from the scoping research to develop larger-scale work on mental health and wellbeing implications of online ‘transgressive’ behaviours.

KEY FINDINGS and outputs FROM THE RESEARCH

  • The starting point of the study was the assumption that most of the discourse about young people’s digital lives is focused on risks and does not adequately a) reflect the views and experiences of young people themselves or b) take account of those aspects of online behaviours that young people themselves deem to be ‘fun’ or ‘pleasurable’.

  • Our research reinforces the need for the inclusion of the voices of young people themselves in the development of policy and practice relating young people’s online behaviours. It also clearly demonstrates the challenges associated with doing so. We found that our research participants tended to revert to ‘safe’, dominant, risk-infused narratives about their digital lives, offering limited insight into how the intersections between risk, harm, and pleasure online are navigated by young people.

  • If young people are to be encouraged to question and move beyond these conventional narratives, for the purposes of research and to inform policy and practice development, there is a need to devise a range of sensitive and nuanced research tools and language. The development of appropriately diverse and nuanced research tools

  • Academic-practitioner, cross-sector collaborations, and participatory research with young people as ‘co-researchers’ presents s an opportunity for useful learning and food for thought.

  • The use of virtual methods (e.g., to recruit research participants via social media and speak to them through the medium of virtual focus groups) presents both challenges and opportunities for engaging young people in the research process.


Research Report

Research report (Berman, 2022) produced by mental health charity YoungMinds. YoungMinds collaborated on the development and design of the research and the delivery of two focus groups and five one-to-one interviews. The report describes the methodology and key findings of these research activity.