Situations and Relationships Affecting Adolescent Stress and Loneliness: Quantitative Longitudinal Social Network Survey, Qualitative Interview and Participatory Workshops, 2023-2025

Abstract

This collection contains data from a methods development study which uncovers how stress and loneliness in schools varies across different spatial and social situations. Walking interviews and participatory staff-student workshops informed the development of a longitudinal survey in participating schools. Methods and variables used in the survey varied between schools. One school dataset contains greater detail on student evaluations of each situation, the other school dataset has greater detail on social networks and relationships, and longitudinal follow up. The survey also contains demographics and standardised measures of stress (PSS), loneliness (UCLA), depression and anxiety (GAD2). Network data access is restricted and available only upon request.Most mental health survey research asks questions about how individual young people feel in general, asking people if they feel stressed or lonely 'all of the time', 'most of the time' or 'none of the time', but without asking what the different times are like, or what other people are doing at the times where they feel stressed or lonely. We think that research spends too much time looking at individual young people, and too much time asking general questions about mental health. Instead, we should look at the important situations in young people's lives, we should look at different social interactions that take place in those situations, and we should think about the connections between people. Looking at connections between people is thinking about a system of people, so we call our approach the SOCial SITuational Systems or SOCITS approach. SOCITS will help to understand the reasons for things like loneliness, stress and mental health. And change how we improve mental health. Instead of only looking at what goes on inside people's heads, SOCITS will looking at the social situations and places around individuals that affect mental health. In the project, we will train young people to be researchers, so they can interview secondary school students to find out about the situations in their school and how they might affect stress, loneliness, mental health, and holding negative attitudes about other people with mental illness. We will take what we find out from these interviews, and have a group discussion with young people, teachers, and mental health researchers to find out what the group thinks are the reasons for poor mental health. We will use the final decisions of the group do two things: design a survey to find out what actually happens in schools, and build a computer program to create an artificial school that we can use to study what would happen if we changed some of the situations in school. After this, we will test out the survey we designed to see what young people think about filling out the survey, and we will come up with plans on how to analyse the surveys. We will also do studies with the computer programme artificial school, and compare the artificial school to what we know about the real school from the survey information. By the end of the study, we hope that we will have added some new ways to do mental health research that can help improve how adolescents feel, help prevent poor mental health, and improve the quality of life for people with mental illness.</p