The BeGOOD project at the University of Oxford, led by Prof. Ilina Singh, seeks to integrate young people’s perspectives to help guide research and policy that affects them.

Recently, alongside our Young People’s Advisory Group and game developers Preloaded, we have co-produced a game to explore young people’s decision making around data privacy, mental health help-seeking and literacy. The game, as well as being a new data collection tool, serves as an information and educational tool to invite thoughtful reflection about mental health. We’ve had positive uptake of the game, with some 19,000 players worldwide, and we are now seeking to more directly compare the game against more traditional research methods.

To that end, we are currently inviting schools and sixth forms in and around Oxfordshire to join a research study with groups of 16-18 year olds. Participation would involve our team visiting the school for a single session of less than an hour, at a convenient time during or after the school day. The feedback we’ve received from students and teachers so far has been that participation has been an invaluable experience.

James Cross, Director of Didcot Sixth Form, kindly provided his testimonial:

Didcot Sixth Form students participated in pilot study that was co-designed by the Young Person’s Advisory Group working within the wider research group. One of those students is in Year 13 at Didcot Sixth Form and was instrumental in facilitating the pilot study with a group of her peers. The team from Oxford were highly professional and a pleasure to work with, and were able to work around our timetable. It was a pleasure to see how keen the students were to be part of ‘real’ research, particularly as they could see that there had been input from other young people in the process, and I am confident they left with a greater understanding of the process of scientific research. I would thoroughly recommend getting involved. 

We welcome inquiries from any school with 16-18 year old students. If participation in our study sounds like a promising opportunity for students at your school, e-mail us at info@thesocial.org for more information, or fill in the form here.

Stills from the game