Wellbeing in Teens Network in UK and Ireland (Well-TeenN)

Well-TeenN is a UK-Irish Network created in response to the growing mental health concerns of adolescents in the UK and Ireland, i.e. young people in secondary school. Adolescence is a time of marked psychological, social, cognitive, and biological changes. These developmental changes in turn help the adolescent respond to changes in expectations about their abilities, independence, and behaviour.

These daily experiences contribute to adolescent wellbeing. Despite the knowledge we have about individual psychological, biological, and social systems, we are only beginning to understand the interplay among them and how they affect adolescent wellbeing. Over the long run, day to day challenges (i.e. related to mood, sleep, stress) can lead to mental health problems, therefore there is a need to understand them from the adolescent perspective and to study them scientifically.

Equally important is to gain knowledge on factors related to resiliency. Well-TeenN will unite researchers with interest in adolescence from a variety of perspectives to study adolescent wellbeing using a biopsychosocial approach, but will also unite adolescent voices.

Over the course of the grant the virtual network of schools will be expanded beyond the schools in London and Cork, where we already have a contact, to include more schools to accurately represent diversity and demographics of the regions. The network of schools will be a way to reach adolescents so that they can voice their experiences and the issues that matter to them.

This information will inform research planning. Our partnership will provide insight to the schools on the science of adolescence - theory and evidence - and applied knowledge in form of workshops around adolescent concerns and school-wide events. The added value is that adolescents will have contact with scientists and raise their awareness about careers in science and understanding about how science works.

Educators/parents will have the opportunity to both voice their experiences and gain knowledge of the current evidence base.

Well-TeenN will create a forum for exchange among academics. We will hold workshops on research methods highlighting the particular demands associated with studying young people and alternative methods of data collection. These workshops will be informed by the insights voiced by the young people themselves.

Our website will be user-friendly for stakeholders (young people, educators/parents) and researchers. Here, researchers will highlight results, pose questions to the group, and recruit collaborators. To begin with our network activities will be virtual and, when it becomes safe to do so, we will move to face-to-face exchange meetings (approximately January 2021).

Meeting proceedings will be accessible on the website to maximize their utility. The network will be a training ground for early career researchers (ECRs) and an academic exchange with opportunities for MSc and PhD students. We will establish a bursary, funded via this proposal, to enable travel and participation by post-graduate students.

We will set a mutual research agenda using "sand-pit" discussion technique. The Well-TeenN researchers will have opportunity to engage in each other's ongoing research activities, including opportunities for MSc projects. Our dissemination activities will include peer-reviewed papers via the collaboration between the two PIs and ECRs and joint research presentations at national and international meetings.

We will develop and submit full grant bids for a joint 3-year research programme for a longitudinal study using a biopsychosocial approach to examine adolescent wellbeing in ecological settings. Methods and data collection techniques suitable for young people will be advanced. The proposal will target topics that matter for young people and will do so in a way that is acceptable to young people, thus enhancing participation across socioeconomic and ethnic groups in both the UK and Ireland.