October updates from Libby

Hi everyone,

I hope you're having a good month 🎃🦇☕🍂

I have a few fun updates to share with you!

• Firstly, we'd like to give a warm welcome to our new placement student within the PPI Team, Josh. We are so happy to have him joining us in the Youth Cafe as a co-facilitator, and we look forward to you meeting him soon! Here is a little introduction from him:

"Hi everyone, I'm Josh, the newest placement student with the PPI team and I study psychology with neuroscience at university. Outside of academics I love to read and play games, and am always looking for recommendations. I'm also a music fanatic that loves playing instruments like piano and violin, and working on musical production in many genres!"

• Secondly, we are planning on utilising our website a lot more, so watch this space for updates! Some of you suggested it would be helpful to have a calendar or schedule of upcoming meetings available- we totally agree, and have added a calendar (click the button below for a shortcut) in which you can see upcoming meetings, skills session, in-person events, and group induction sessions (which you can book onto if you're joining the Cafe). We hope this is useful, and would love to hear what else you'd like to see on here/our other social media. We will of course still email about any sessions/events coming up, so don't worry about missing anything :)

What's on

• Lastly, I am going to list some relevant involvement opportunities each month on this blog from other organisations- I hope they are interesting/useful for you! A lot of them have deadlines, so I will include the ones which leave a reasonable amount of time left for you to check them out. I think this will be more efficient than me forwarding emails from McPin etc to all of you, but if you think otherwise please do let me know!

McPin (Young People’s Network | The McPin Foundation)

Test out a Climate Action Chatbot to Support Young Adults in Navigating Climate Concerns- deadline 11:55pm Friday 31st October 2025

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Test out a Climate Action Chatbot to Support Young Adults in Navigating Climate Concerns

 What’s the Project?The purpose of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness and ethicalness of a custom-designed climate action chatbot (Clim8) in supporting young adults (aged 18–34) in the UK to manage climate-related concerns and engage in practical, value-aligned climate action. 

The research will assess both emotional and behavioural outcomes through using a pre- and post-interaction questionnaire. The research specifically explores the chatbot’s potential to provide emotional support and enhance emotional regulation (resilience) and deliver actionable guidance while maintaining ethical and safe engagement practices. The chatbot is designed to support users across four key areas: 

• responding to climate-related feelings

• building emotional resilience

• guiding climate-positive action

• enhancing climate education and awareness. 

Its aim is to help users process climate anxiety while empowering them to take meaningful, values-aligned steps toward climate action. 

This project is being conducted by MSc Artificial Intelligence and Adaptive Systems student [Fabiola Detari] and project supervisor, Professor of Interaction Design in the Department of Informatics [Prof Kate Howland] from the School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex. The results of this research will be written into a scientific report for an MSc Artificial Intelligence and Adaptive Systems Masters’ Thesis Project. What’s the opportunity?Fabiola needs five to ten young adults.

You will be invited to take part in a research study exploring how young adults engage with climate change and environmental causes through a web-based chatbot (web application).

The study will run over the course of one week and will involve completing short pre- and post-interaction questionnaires via the University of Sussex’s Qualtrics platform. During the study, you will interact with a custom-designed climate action chatbot at their convenience.

In more detail:

• After expressing interest in the study, you will be asked to email the researcher, who will then send an Information and Consent Sheet for you to read, sign, and return.

• Following this, you will complete a pre-interaction self-completion questionnaire (approximately 5 minutes), which includes questions about climate-related concerns and emotional resilience.

• You will then be invited to interact with the custom-designed climate action chatbot over the course of one week, remotely, as often as you like. The researcher will provide a secure URL to access the chatbot, which is a web application that does not collect personal user input.

• After this interaction period, you will complete a post-interaction self-completion questionnaire (approximately 10–15 minutes). This will reassess their climate-related concerns and emotional resilience, and gather feedback on your experience, climate action readiness, behavioural responses, and views on the chatbot’s design and ethical features.

• You may request a summary of the results by contacting the researcher. You will also have the option to receive a copy of the final research report, which may support ongoing environmental engagement.

 What’s required of me? 

• Must be based in the UK.

• Aged between 18 and 34. 

• Interested in climate action or environmental issues - such as sustainability, conservation, or everyday choices that support a healthier planet. 

Self-exclusion criteria: If you experience significant anxiety about climate change, the team kindly ask that you do not take part, as this is a self-exclusion criterion.What will be provided?As a thank you, you will be entered into a £20 prize draw for completing the questionnaires, and a separate £20 prize draw for interacting with the chatbot. I’m interested! Who do I contact?If you are interested in this opportunity, please email (f.detari@sussex.ac.uk) with brief answers to the following questions:

1. What is your name? 

2. What is your date of birth?

3. Are you based in the UK?

4. Why are you interested in this specific opportunity?

5. How did you hear about this opportunity? 

You are welcome to send your responses in audio or video format if preferred. If you need any help completing your expression of interest, you can get in touch with Fabiola. 

Please click here to read The McPin Foundation’s privacy policy What’s the deadline to apply? 23:55 Friday 31^st October 2025. 

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Get involved in shaping a book all about youth involvement! 'Best Practices in Adolescent Involvement in Health Research'- deadline 3pm Friday 31st October 2025

Get involved in shaping a book all about youth involvement! 'Best Practices in Adolescent Involvement in Health Research'

 What’s the Project?As part of a PhD Project, Dr Azza Warraitch investigated young people's experiences of being involved in health research, as well as existing guidance on how to involve young people in health research. To ensure that the research can be shared with as many people as possible, Azza and a wider team of participatory and youth involvement researchers, including young people themselves, have written and contributed to a book titled 'Best Practices in Adolescent Involvement in Health Research.' 

Since the book is all about involving young people in research, it is important that young people are involved in the process of writing the book, by giving feedback on it's content. That's what this project is, to invite you to contribute your thoughts, opinions, and experiences to provide feedback on the contents of several chapters in the book. The two book chapters that the team need your input on are:

• Chapter One: Conducting meetings and workshops with adolescents and maintaining communication

• Chapter Two: Best practices of adolescent involvement in health research

The team would love for you to read the chapters that need youth feedback, and you are welcome to do so, but reading the full chapters is not a requirement. The workshops will be designed to facilitate discussion on core contents within the book without a need to read the chapters in full. However, if you do want to read and give detailed feedback, there is a worksheet for you to complete to help guide your written feedback. What’s the opportunity?This opportunity is an invitation to contribute your thoughts, opinions, and experiences to provide feedback on the contents of two chapters in the book. The team would like to make giving them your feedback as accessible as possible, so there are lots of ways for you to engage and give your feedback. Signing up to be involved in this short project will involve:

• Being invited to an introduction and icebreaker session

• Committing to taking part in either a) a group workshop or b) a 1-1 feedback session, or c) you can also read a chapter and give feedback using comments or a worksheet.

All the sessions are online only.  What’s required of me? Internet access to join an online call

• Aged 10–24 (or up to 26 if under 25 when you began the research)

• Speak fluent English 

• Have been or tried to be involved in active research (not as a participant)

  
  

What will be provided?The team are able to offer gift vouchers to young people as a token of appreciation for their time and contributions, with a value of €20 for each young person. 

Payment is in Euros, as the lead researcher is based in Belfast, but the £ equivalent for the same amount is available for young people. 

I’m interested! Who do I contact?You can get in touch with Kirsty Hughes at ResearchInvolvement.KH@outlook.com  to ask for more information or you can follow this link to the expression of interest form: https://tinyurl.com/youthinhealthresearch Please click here to read The McPin Foundation’s privacy policy What’s the deadline to apply? 3pm Friday October 31^st 2025 

Autism, Self Esteem and Mental Health Study  - deadline 28th November 2025

Autism, Self Esteem and Mental Health Study   

 What’s the Project?

Research shows that mental health difficulties are common in autistic individuals. They are also more likely to experience mental health problems than non-autistic people. One study found that autistic teenagers are 16 times more likely to have a mental health diagnosis compared to non-autistic teenagers. But many autistic people find that mental health support is not accessible or helpful for them. There is also a lack of research evidence about how best to support autistic individuals with mental health difficulties. We need more research into how we can reduce experience of mental health difficulties for autistic people, and how we can improve the support available to them.

This research study is aiming to investigate why autistic young people may develop low-self esteem, and the impact of this on their mental health. I aim to complete interviews with young people to understand more about their lived experience which will help us develop our theoretical understanding and consequently improve mental health support available for autistic young people.  What’s the opportunity?Before I proceed with interviews, I would like to get feedback from autistic young people with experience of self-esteem difficulties, and low mood or anxiety, about the interview topic guide and list of adjustments for the interview. I would like to meet with a total of 4 young people. This informed by my research budget available for PPI at this point in time.

The tasks include: to review the materials for a new research study which will complete interviews about mental health with autistic young people. I would like to get young people’s views and ideas on things about:- Interview Questions: are the questions and prompts worded in a respectful and affirming way? Do the questions make sense? Is there something I haven’t asked which I should be asking?- Adjustments: how can I make an interview feel as safe and comfortable as possible for an autistic young person?

The feedback from individuals who participate will inform the final interview topic guide and how interviews will be set up to be as accessible and inclusive as possible.

The materials we will be discussing, plus a list of questions I would like to ask, can be sent to individuals in advance of the meeting.

Participation will involve one meeting for 1 hour. The meeting can be completed over several shorter meetings that add up to 1 hour total time if this suits the individual’s needs. We can make any adjustments during the meeting to suit the individual’s needs.

There may be opportunities for further involvement later in the project, but this is to be confirmed. 

Young people's contributions will help inform the interview topic guide. This will help me ask questions in the right way and therefore gain a deeper and better understanding of participants' experiences. This means that the research will be more meaningful and will help us develop further knowledge of what it is like to be autistic and have mental health difficulties, which will help us improve mental health support available for autistic young people.

Additionally, individuals will be able to help me provide a safe and comfortable interview experience for other autistic young people.   What’s required of me? • Young people aged 13-18 • Identifies as autistic • Experience of difficulties with self-esteem  • Experience of either anxiety or low mood  What will be provided?To compensate for individual’s time and expertise, £25 per hour will be given in the form of Amazon vouchers. A total of 1 hour of an individual's time is expected.   I’m interested! Who do I contact?If you are interested in this opportunity, please email lucie.smith@kcl.ac.uk with brief answers to the following questions:

1. What is your name?

2. What is your date of birth?

3. Why are you interested in this specific opportunity?

4. Please give details of any relevant experience

5. Sometimes after talking about topics like mental health, people feel they need a little extra support or someone to chat to. What support do you currently have in place (e.g. supportive friends, family, health professionals or mental health charities)? Is there anything that we could do to support you or make your involvement experience better?

6. How did you hear about this opportunity?

You are welcome to send your responses in audio or video format if preferred! If you need any help completing your expression of interest, you can get in touch with lucie.smith@kcl.ac.uk Please click here to read The McPin Foundation’s privacy policy What’s the deadline to apply?Please provide the specific day and time of the deadline.28th November 2025. 

I look forward to speaking to you soon!

~Libby, Youth PPI Coordinator 🐞