‘Nobody knows young people like young people do!’

The researchers

Studying young people's lives and experiences should be done in collaboration with young people. This statement may seem obvious, but in research – as in many other areas – young people's views are often ignored, overlooked, or simply not asked for. As a research team aiming to improve the public's health and well-being, we are continually looking to young people to tell us how we can improve the ways we work with them to ensure that their voices are heard and represented.
 
Our Tec-19 (Teens and Covid-19) study, conducted throughout the first year of the pandemic in the UK, has provided insight into what young people value from being involved in research. We've learned more about the contribution they can make beyond just providing data, and how they would like to be treated by educators, policymakers and researchers.

We conducted discussions with 80 11-18-year-olds (in 10 groups) and collected photo and video 'diaries' from them at seven different points between March 2020 and March 2021. How were they experiencing the lockdowns, school closures, social isolation and all the other challenges the pandemic brought? Could that inform the pandemic response of public health and local authority colleagues? 

As we recruited each new group of young people, we consulted on the best way to communicate with them. We asked if they would consider sending us photos and videos so that we would have a visual record of their daily lives. The majority of young people suggested social media would be the best way to communicate, singling out Snapchat. For legal reasons younger groups were unable to access social media apps, so had to use email.

Using methods that allowed us to track the experience of each group over time, we found that the young people showed resilience and strength in the face of incredibly stressful life events, but also that they were able to acknowledge and talk about their own and each other's struggles. Members of the research team were assigned to facilitate each group discussion. Over the year, we were able to build relationships that encouraged an open and honest dialogue about their most personal thoughts and experiences. 

Pandemic-related challenges to their mental health were a recurring topic of conversation, although this was more prevalent in the older groups of young people. We found that despite many months of uncertainty and confusion, young people emerged from the first year of the pandemic with a sense of positivity and new-found strength. Most felt their ability to cope with future crises had increased, and that they had learned not to take physical social contact and in-person schooling for granted.

What do young people value about being involved?

In the last wave of focus groups, we asked the young people to reflect on their experience of taking part in the study. The response was heart-warming. The young people told us how much they had valued being able to put forward their own points of view on pandemic-related issues that were important to them, and that no one else seemed to be asking them about. They felt they had made a real and positive contribution to our research and were keen to hear about our findings once we had analysed the data.

The young people particularly enjoyed that we had been able to pass on their thoughts to those in local and national government who were responsible for aspects of the UK's pandemic response. We fed back to local government through Sabina Stanescu (see below) and through other representatives from both Hampshire County Council and Southampton City Council. We also passed on the young people's opinions and wishes to national government representatives at the Department of Health and Social Care, for whom we were carrying out a rapid evaluation of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Covid-19 Saliva Testing Programme at the same time.

We worked in collaboration with two groups of young people from Southampton to ensure that their values and opinions were being taken into account at every stage. These groups provided feedback on our study design from the very start of the process, through the ethics application and then throughout the study as it progressed. They offered opinions on the issues that would be relevant to discuss with them and how best to communicate with them. This helped us to retain our sample with minimal drop-out despite the length of time of the data collection period. It also meant that we knew we were not only collecting data that would inform our research, but also that we were helping young people to find their voices and tell us how we could help them.

We recently produced a report (tinyurl.com/mprbhd4a) aimed at the young people who took part in the study, to let them know what we have done since finishing data collection, and how their contribution to TeC-19 has and will continue to make a difference.

How would young people like to be treated?

When reflecting on the UK government's management of the pandemic, many of the young people we spoke to felt disappointed and angry at the government's choices and their lack of specific communication with young people. In one speech Boris Johnson had specifically praised young people for their resilience – yet they felt largely ignored, and that some of the approaches taken by the government (such as the closure of schools for long periods of time) had done lasting damage to their future prospects. They knew they were least at risk from the virus itself but might be most affected by its consequences. 

Some of the young people had changed their plans for the future as a consequence of their pandemic experience; some switched from applications to university to look at apprenticeships. Others were waiting anxiously to find out if the centre-assessed grades their teachers would give them on the basis of work done before the pandemic were enough to get them into their university of choice. They felt lost, out of control, and let down. Ultimately, they expressed a need for more targeted messaging aimed specifically at young people that addressed issues that mattered to them. Young people wanted to be prioritised rather than praised and to have a say in how their government tackled issues that were relevant to their lives.

One way we tried to improve communication between policymakers and young people was to engage with local government. We worked alongside representatives from Southampton City Council and Hampshire County Council to ensure a direct passage of information from the study to local policymakers and educators, and that these stakeholders had opportunities to ask their own questions of our groups of young people in order to understand how they could best support them through this pandemic and any future crises.

The policymaker

Many readers will remember watching Professor Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson explaining the science behind the spread of infection and the preventive measures people should put in place. The guidance was there for us, but then we needed to support the residents of our city to understand and follow it. We had the what and we were working on the how. What types, forms and levels of communication would convey these messages in a way that was easily understood, relevant, acceptable and effective?

The TeC-19 study helped us understand how young people understood the guidance and the science, what information they needed, and what forms of communication would be most acceptable to them. It also gave us an insight into how they felt about the whole situation, what they were most worried about, and what they might need from us.

It was particularly valuable for us to understand how young people were feeling during the pandemic, what their main problems were, how they were coping and how they felt about all the restrictions. Schools were closed, which meant they missed out on socialising as well as education. But they were also missing opportunities to volunteer, gain work experience and learn important communication skills. We fed this need back to relevant colleagues, who took action where they could.

We talked with young people about how they communicated with their peers, as well as where they got their information from. I was interested to learn that they were not watching national television. We worked with schools and other colleagues in local education teams to explore other ways of sending messages. We used social media as a way for residents and young people to spread reliable and official information.

Throughout the study, colleagues and I from the Portsmouth, Hampshire and Southampton Public Health teams had regular meetings with the academic study team. This partnership was unique in many ways, but for myself and my team, it was the true two-way communication that made it special and so useful. At meetings, I and other colleagues from Public Health put forward questions to be asked by the researchers about young people's experiences; this helped us prioritise our messaging and to feedback to colleagues from Commissioning teams and Services about any potential issues. Most importantly, it was a way to understand how to tailor our messages to match young people's level of understanding and address what they were most worried about.

This study has definitely opened up a new and exciting way of working, where academic research teams collaborate with local government in a way that has an immediate impact. We value the voice and input of young people, and nobody knows young people as young people do! The systematic nature of the research and the ethical rigour with which it was carried out meant we could trust the findings from the study to represent what was important to young people. 

The two-way communication really paved to way for co-production in a safe, relevant and productive way, even if this had to happen during a global pandemic. I found the insights from young people to be very mature and useful in our planning and prioritising. Equally, the researchers' openness to altering the topic guides to ask questions of immediate relevance to us was appreciated and helpful. I can see this working well on a number of topics in the future, especially those relevant to public health.

The young people

The researchers recently met Ben and Isaac, two TeC-19 study participants, at Ben's home in Southampton to look back on and chat about their experiences of taking part in the study. The two boys were 16 years old when they took part in the study and were part of one of the first groups to be recruited: a mixed-gender group of eight young people who collectively named themselves 'Summer group' in the hope that lockdown would be over by the summer. 

Ben: I actually found it quite useful as a weekly check-in I think, and it also in some ways probably made me more accountable to do things with my week which probably helped me out quite a bit… It was just interesting and it helped me realise that we're all going through the same thing and then if someone had done something interesting it was like, 'oh I've never thought of that and maybe I could try it in my day' sort of thing.

Isaac: It was definitely a release for us and it was quite an unexpected one. I didn't think going in that it was gonna be anything for me, like any rewarding aspect of it, but it definitely was so that's good… Kind of the social side of the research because I don't think you would've got to a level of conversation unless we did have something that structured with questions, so that was really nice… The people running [the study] were like really really nice. We did actually build some rapport with them.

Maybe 'cause there was a structure behind it you obviously had to ask what everyone was doing and it gave you a sort of, 'I'm gonna check on this person weekly'. Whereas you might've not messaged someone, 'cause lockdown was really long that one so you'd maybe not have checked in with certain people outside of the study.

Ben: Yeah I feel like it was a more fulfilling catch-up doing that because there was always a set list of things that we'd talk about and then you can't not know what your friends are doing which is quite nice. Whereas otherwise, it can be a bit harder to do it like over Snapchat, messaging that sort of thing.

I think [being part of the study] helped me a lot actually because it was kind of the only structured thing that there was going on really, and it was just a nice chance to speak to all my friends. Also, the Amazon vouchers as well meant you could buy little things here and there which helped with the boredom and stuff. 
It was a time when a lot of people felt quite in the dark and they didn't have any control over the situation, and I wouldn't say we had any control over the situation but it was nice to know that um our feedback was being heard by someone.

Isaac: Yeah I mainly just thought about it was nice to know that someone's trying with younger people because I did feel like there wasn't much specifically for youth [but] there are people out there that are at least listening to us or want to listen which is nice.   

Ben: I think to people considering taking part in research I'd tell them it's not as… I don't know if scary is the right word, but it's not as big and official as it seems, and it's actually quite a relaxed thing and it doesn't have to get pressurised. I felt pretty comfortable talking to everyone on the team. There was nothing difficult about it, there were never any expectations, it didn't feel like a job, it was informal.

Back to the researchers…

Ultimately, we would encourage psychologists to engage with young people wherever possible. A flexible, open and respectful approach goes a long way and it is essential that researchers consider not only how their participants can benefit from taking part in their research, but also what contributions they can make beyond data generation.

About the authors

Sarah Jenner
PhD student in Psychology, University of Southampton

Mary Barker
Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Science, University of Southampton

Sabina Stanescu
Public Health Department, Southampton City Council