Crucial Crew

On Tuesday 15^th March we manned a stall at Crucial Crew, a Welwyn Hatfield event aimed at sharing information with young people. Year 9 students from six local schools attended the event throughout the day. A range of stalls were available to provide young people with information and advice about services and opportunities available to them. The HBSC England team were there to inform young people about how they can be involved in research, why it is important and the benefits for them.

The HBSC England study is keen to involve young people in the research process, and not just as participants. Young people can be involved in lots of different ways, in the past young people have helped us develop the HBSC questionnaire, piloted questions with their peers to gain feedback on the questions, and interpreted the HBSC data through blog posts, conference presentations and designing infographics.

Young people usually engage with our research through schools, however Crucial Crew gave us the opportunity to talk to lots of young people from different schools about our research and how they can get involved. 

The day was very successful! We had some interesting conversations with young people about research, and they had lots of great ideas about the best ways for involving young people. To all the students (and teachers!) who were interested in getting involved with our research – we will be in touch soon and are looking forward to our future collaboration! We hope all the year 9 students who attended Crucial Crew found the event to be both useful and interesting.