June 2018

Working with students in mental health research

We have recently completed the five-week period of data collection for our first two schools. These schools have just one six-month follow-up to complete. It has been great to be in schools, speaking with students and being asked about mental health in general and the process of carrying out research. I've enjoyed building partnerships with these schools and am looking forward to delivering a few talks and assemblies as compensation for the time of the staff and students. Another aspect of working in schools that I used to find a burden, but now quite enjoy, is the completeness of the data we are collecting. There are of course many instances where students do not complete all questionnaires in the packs, or miss out certain items. There are also students who decide to withdraw entirely, citing reasons from the research being too personal, to it being far too boring. I used to see these as nuisances in the data collection process, but I have started to see and respect it as a vital part of working with human participants. It is interesting to see students decide which questions they will and won't answer and choose whether or not they want to continue to take part. It is nice to be reminded that in psychology we have the privilege of working with fully autonomous and agentic individuals, and not 'black box' subjects to which we put a question and invariably expect a simple answer.