Impact case study database

Impacts on public policy has led to the regulation of social media companies in the UK

**Policy decisions and changes to legislation have been informed by our research evidence which was important in drafting and developing the intermediate bill on online harms in the UK in 2020 [R4]. Our contribution to policy development was pivotal as we were the only academics guiding parliamentarians with evidence co-produced with young people and on youth perspectives on digital health learning.

Evidence provided by Goodyear to the Chief Medical Officer roundtable on screen time and social media use [R4] was explicitly reported in the preceding White Paper (E1, Box 11). Based on concerns about online safety for young people outlined in E1, the Online Harms Bill called for the appointment of Ofcom as an online regulator for social media. This directly reflects the oral and written evidence [R4] provided by Goodyear in the House of Commons to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Media and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing [E3, paras 17,18]. This led to the recommendation that social media companies establish a duty of care to include new filters and restrictions on content [E4].

This is a shift in policy debate and interest by government, and is significant because our research highlighted to parliamentarians a new issue of concern. Prior to this intervention, social media were regulated under the broad category of the Internet, and there was no regulator or legislation of the practices of social media companies in the UK related to online harms. The change has national reach where it impacts on 71% of young people in the UK (approx. 7.3 million age 10–19; Statista, 2018), who are reported to be active users of social media (Ofcom, 2019).

Impacts on learning by policy changes to the national school curriculum

In 2020, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) was made a mandatory subject in 20,202 UK state schools. Furthermore, the content of the curriculum was changed to include a new focus on age-appropriate digital content, digital literacy, and online safety education — in relation to health, e.g., body image and social media (Department for Education (DfE) 2019).

Both these changes to educational policy were directly informed by our research [R3] and follow recommendations made by Goodyear to the Science and Technology Committee (STC) in the form of written evidence [E5, para 21], and in responses made during oral evidence in the House of Commons [E6, Q298–300; E4, paras 19, 145, 153]. Based on this evidence, the STC made the following recommendation:

We recommend that PSHE education be made mandatory for primary and secondary school children in the next parliamentary session and that the PSHE curriculum delivers an age-appropriate understanding of, and resilience towards, the harms and benefits of the digital world. [E4, para 149]

The APPG also made the recommendation that PSHE should be mandatory and include a focus on health-related harms and benefits of social media use [E2, para 5.1]. This statement echoes the oral evidence provided by Goodyear based on R1 to the House of Commons [E2, paras 3–5] and documented in a report from the APPG [E2, key finding, p. 5]. Finally, The Youth Select Committee recommended that media literacy for body image should be taught in PSHE [E7, paras 12, 13], again drawing on written evidence based on R2 provided by Goodyear and Armour.

Informed by the research evidence [R3], the statutory guidelines have changed, so that they now require that pupils should know about comparisons with others online and how using social media can lead to the development of an unrealistic body image (DfE, 2019, p. 36), how relationships on social media develop (DfE, 2019, p. 36), why age restrictions exist for content and platforms (DfE, 2019, p. 32) and the positive impacts of social media on relationships and health behaviours (DfE, 2019, p. 36). In addition, the need for teaching different content related to social media for primary and secondary school pupils was accepted (DfE, 2019). These changes reached, at a minimum, the 8 million pupils in state school education (DfE, 2019). Pre-2020, PSHE digital literacy and health education were not statutory requirements (PSHE Association, 2018).

Influencing professional standards by informing best practice

Professional bodies have been influenced by our research and have developed best practices and guidelines for informing and training teachers and coaches who have a responsibility for young people’s health and wellbeing.

As an example, ukactive recently published national guidelines on healthy lifestyle behaviours, and our evidence [R1, R2] on social media and physical activity education were cited as an example of best practice [E8]. The guidelines were sent to 4,000 ukactive member organisations (i.e., physical activity organisations with a typical minimum membership of 100 individuals), which has subsequently impacted on how technology is used pedagogically. For example, the research evidence [R4] informed the development of a mobile gaming app by Rocket Impact — a technology start-up company — to encourage physical activity, which is now commercially available across the UK [E8].

Similarly, our evidence on inclusion [R5] was included in the design of continuing professional development with Activity Alliance who changed their professional training/development workshops for teachers to include a focus on inquiry in inclusion [E9]. This has impacted on c.14,500 UK teachers and c.340,000 young people. Guidelines have since been adopted by 30 workshop tutors, who deliver training to c.900 teachers per year; this impacts on c.50,000 young people.

Finally, safeguarding practices have been changed at The Football Association (FA) to address potential risks for the online safety of youth sport coaches. The FA stated:

[Griffiths’ and Goodyear’s] body of work [R6] helped us to [… be] more aware of the need to manage individuals who are over and under 16 in digital spaces [… and] define better working practices with regards to education and digital/online safeguarding principles as they relate to Football. [E10]

This change to practice and has impacted on the learning of over 6,000 international sport coaches from 155 different countries [E10]. The FA have since adopted these safeguarding principles for their online training platform that reaches 80,000 football coaches, with 30,000 working with 5–11 age groups [E10].

Professional training standards of sports coaches have been positively transformed

Empowering Coaching™ practices [KF1, KF4] have been adopted by individuals and organisations across the world, with our training having been delivered in 13 different countries (UK, Brazil, France, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Qatar, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan). The “strong research and theoretical base together with the point that it has been rigorously evaluated” [S1] has led to a range of governing bodies and charities [e.g. S1, S2, S3] incorporating Empowering Coaching^TM into their training programmes and qualifications.

The practice and knowledge of practitioners have been positively influenced with a total of 64 tutors across the world having been fully trained to deliver Empowering Coaching™. As of December 2020, it was estimated that these tutors have reached over 2,500 sports coaches and teachers worldwide. Where applicable, a commercial licensing model is used which enables tutors to train more tutors (training-the-trainers) which rapidly embeds and extends Empowering Coaching™. Commercial licences have been awarded to institutions of higher education , sport federations and dance associations in the UK, Brazil, Mexico, Spain and Sweden [e.g. S4]. For example, in 2020, 100 Archery GB coaches/club managers participated in Empowering Coaching™ workshops with a licence agreement now providing more than 2,100 licensed Archery GB coaches and 11,000+ instructors access to the bespoke Empowering Archery™ [S1]. The licencing model has also worked particularly well in assisting translation into foreign language settings where, for example, tutors in Mexico and Brazil have been trained by tutors from Spain originally trained by ourselves. This training-the-trainers model has allowed us to spread the ethos and practice of Empowering Coaching^TM globally.

In a further detailed example, we have changed practice in grassroots football as a direct impact of Empowering Coaching™ training. To date, training has been delivered to 521 coaches and their players in England, France, Greece, Norway and Spain [S5]. Post-workshop evaluations of coaches highlighted (on a 5-pt scale) a better understanding of how to become more empowering (M=4.4) along with a commitment to be more empowering (M=4.5) [S7]. The training has led to reported improvements in the motivational climate [KF2] along with reduced intentions to drop out [S5], as testified to by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA):

[The] underlying research and evidence for the impact of Empowering Coaching™ have informed the vision and coach training strategies of UEFA [and identification of] the environment set by the coach as the most important factor in growing participation and encouraging high performance […The vision is to develop] high-quality education opportunities […] for grassroots coaches, teachers and parents, with a focus on providing the skills and knowledge to create an empowering environment for all players. [S3]

Improving the environment of youth sport to enhance health and wellbeing

We have collaborated with public bodies, associations, and NGOs, in numerous countries, to improve the best practice of coaches and teachers to provide an empowering environment for young people [KF2, KF3]. The result is that the principles underpinning Empowering Coaching™ are now widely adopted across Youth Sport. International examples include:

1. Duda was invited by the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport to provide expertise with regard to the benefits of an empowering motivational climate in youth sport. This has resulted in assessments grounded in the Empowering Coaching™ model being embedded in the evaluation process of Switzerland’s National Youth+Sport Programme [S8].

2. Inclusion of Empowering Coaching™ in the final report of the Safeguarding Youth Sport project as an evidence-based exemplar of ‘good practice’ contributing to the creation of “positive ethical climates in sport organisations” and “the individual empowerment of elite young athletes”. The Safeguarding Youth Sport project was led by the International Centre Ethics in Sport and included 10 partners across 8 EU Member States [S9].

3. Contributions from Duda as the co-author the ‘Copenhagen Consensus Statement 2016: Children, Youth and Physical Activity in Schools and during Leisure-Time’. The Consensus Statement, directly echoing Duda’s work, made the following recommendation to the Danish Sport and Education Association:

An autonomy supportive, mastery focused and caring/socially supportive environment [i.e., an empowering environment] positively influences children’s self-determined motivation, physical activity behaviour and holistic wellbeing […] systematic and deliberate training enables teachers and coaches to create a positive motivational environment for children and youth. [S10]

The downstream impacts on the health and wellbeing of young people are well exemplified by the contributions of Empowering Coaching™ to Doorstep Sport Clubs in the UK. These are fun, informal sports clubs that operate in a style accessible to disadvantaged youth in deprived areas. Through our collaborative work with the StreetGames charity [S2] and other related projects [S5], the health and well-being of 25,000+ young people have been enhanced via their delivery of the Empowering Coaching™ for Doorstep sport programme to this group:

[the programme] has had a positive impact amongst the participants attending their sessions across a range of aspects, including: enjoyment, inclusion, motivation, competence and confidence [… we have seen] how the coaches/ leaders have been able to put learning from the [ Empowering Coaching™] workshop into practice within their doorstep sport sessions and how it has enhanced their skills. [S2]

Impacts on policy and practice by influencing the global governance agency for anti-doping

We have impacted on the policies and practices of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the global organisation responsible for promoting, coordinating and monitoring the fight against drugs in sport. WADA is solely responsible for determining the operations of 154 Anti-Doping Organisations (ADOs) operating across the globe. We have specifically impacted on WADA in two key ways:

1. We have contributed to an extensive review and restructure of WADA’s Social Science Research Program. In particular, we have influenced funding policy and, drawing on University of Birmingham (UoB) Research [KF3, KF4], have enabled WADA to identify “research priorities that will guide investment decisions for the coming four years of the strategy” [E1]. WADA’s Education Senior Manager, attests to our importance in this change, stating that our findings “underpinned the selection of the priorities that were subsequently chosen”, with WADA “already starting to address some of the issues identified in the Barriers and Facilitators section” identified in our work [E1].

2. We have changed the educational practices of WADA. The psychometric instruments we developed [KF1; E1] have been adopted within the professional standard used to measure athletes’ doping beliefs/behaviours and to assess the general effectiveness of anti-doping programmes. The package was downloaded 1248 times by ADOs between 2017 and 2019 [E2].

This collaboration with WADA has led to changes in educational practices within national ADOs. For example, our intervention research [KF2] has influenced the thinking of the Australian ADO, who “found it invaluable when modelling their evaluation system” [E3]. They have since “adopted components of our interventions” within their anti-doping education programme. Similarly, the Greek ADO considered the interventions “extremely helpful in guiding the design” of their anti-doping programmes [E4]. The associated impact on health and wellbeing of these interventions is evidenced by improved doping attitudes in >500 regional and international athletes from the UK, Greece and Italy [E5]. WADA have also developed an infographic detailing the interventions, to help translate the findings for their stakeholders and encourage their further implementation by practitioners [E6].

Impacts on practitioners by defining anti-doping best practice

We have informed evidence-based practice for anti-doping practitioners by summarising key research evidence and providing examples of best practice through a freely available web resource [E7]. Co-created with five European ADOs, a platform to exchange knowledge between researchers and practitioners was developed to showcase the research agenda that influenced WADA [KF3] and the broader implementation plan [KF4]. The beta version was launched in September 2019 at an International Forum (120 attendees) and presented at UKAD’s Clean Sport Forum (100 attendees) in March 2020. The final version was launched through a global virtual conference in December 2020. Attendees at these events included decision makers and practitioners from the global anti-doping community.

We have also contributed to continuing professional development for healthcare professionals working with IPED users informed by UoB research [KF1]. Through a co-creation process, best practice guidance on delivering services to IPED users was developed. This guidance was summarised in three pamphlets distributed to needle-exchange clinics in the UK and Australia and led to evidenced changes in practice amongst healthcare professionals [E8]. The pamphlets have since been adopted in online training for needle and syringe programme workers by Exchange Supplies, a global enterprise developing products and information for injecting drug users, drug services and needle exchanges [E9].

Impacts on learning and understanding by developing the clean sport curriculum

UKAD’s Clean Sport Curriculum has been informed by our research and includes a dedicated unit, developed by Boardley, based on societal factors [KF1, E10a].  The curriculum forms the basis of UKAD’s Clean Sport Education throughout the UK, influencing five athlete pathways from recreational to elite level [E10b]. Our findings also contributed to Clean Sport Week 2019 through a webinar [KF1]. The webinar had 299 sign-ups, 140 live attendees and a further 58 downloads; 238 people requested further information from UKAD because of the webinar [E10b].

Improving social, educational and employment opportunities for homelessness people

By widely collaborating with homelessness charities, we have intensively supported homeless young people in Birmingham and, more broadly, across the UK, transforming their quality of life. We have worked with St Basils to embed MST4Life™ [KF1–KF3] into practice, along with Youth Voice (a national advocacy group for homeless young people) and Homeless Link (a national charity for organisations working directly with people who become homeless in England) to develop a simplified ‘Mental Skills Training Toolkit’ based on MST4Life™. The toolkit has been shared with 40 UK organisations who collectively support over 60,000 young people across the UK [S1]. The training programme is also included in resources for professionals created by the Association for Young People’s Health [S2] and the Young People’s Health Partnership [S3] to address health and social inequalities in vulnerable young people.

MST4Life™ and the Mental Skills Training Toolkit allow the gap to be narrowed between participants and their ‘housed’ peers. MST4Life™ has been shown to improve social welfare and equality by significantly increasing the resilience, educational inclusion and self-worth of individuals [S4]. These benefits are hugely significant given that although 10.5% of the UK’s population is 16–24 years, this age group makes up 21% of the UK’s homeless population. As a group, they face disparate long-term physical and mental health inequalities, including a low age of death (47 years for male; 43 years for women).

Independent evaluation has highlighted that MST4Life™ can secure poverty alleviation by increasing the likelihood that homeless young people transition into education, employment or training and subsequently exit homelessness by 30 percentage points [S5]. In Birmingham, intensive use of the programme by St Basils has contributed to the 37% reduction in Birmingham’s statutory youth homelessness in the period of 2013–2014 to 2017–2018 during a time when the national average increased by 34% [S6]. Improving these outcomes provides public sector savings from forgone tax revenues, unemployment benefits and healthcare costs leading to an estimated lifetime savings of £26m for 1,040 young people who exited homelessness in the first three years of project [S5].

Improving the mental health of young people

The impact of MST4Life™ on individuals is best exemplified by testimony. As one MST4Life™ participant stated:

[MST4Life™] really helped me because with my mental health, I fail to speak out when I’m feeling low and the other day, I had a bit of a rough patch and I knew who to call, because it was, ‘ah I’ve done this, I know who I need when I’m in a crisis, so why am I not doing it?’ And it inspired me to just make that call and it saved a meltdown. [S7]

These mental health benefits can also be translated more broadly. The research underpinning MST4Life™ has been embedded into two apps to improve health and well-being in different settings:

1. KF2 contributed to an emotional workout fitness app ‘Fika’ to help higher education students to train their mental skills and improve well-being. The app is available to the UK’s population of 2,380,000 higher education students and has been adopted by over 55 organisations and institutions. It has been found to reduce mental health decline and improve well-being and educational attainment in students [S8].

2. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on young people’s mental health and has contributed to high rates of homeless youth (there has been an estimated increase of 36%–47% between 2019 and 2020). In response, we translated KF1 and KF2 to provide the evidence base for ‘matchFit’, an app co-created in partnership with the Street Soccer Foundation, Crisis and Shelter charities. The freely available resource is being used by homeless youth across the country who have faced loneliness, isolation and other difficulties accessing services during lockdown restrictions [S9].

The work of a charitable organisation has been transformed by the research

The success MST4Life™ has been confirmed by its inclusion into St Basils core offer, helping to provide better access to finance opportunities. It has enabled St Basils to win new contracts and grants in excess of £7m to assist with their work, despite this being a time of constrained funding from traditional sources for housing services [S10]. Uses of this funding include:

• Appointing new frontline staff, including an in-house clinical psychologist;

• Delivering psychologically informed programmes (including MST4Life™) to young people in their service and the staff who support them;

• Developing spin-off projects such as a psychologically informed programme (related to MST4Life) for parents of young people as part of upstream prevention of homelessness and winning a contract to deliver in a hospital setting (e.g. Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust);

• The production of national recommendations (including MST4Life™) for a pathway out of the youth justice system as part of homelessness prevention.

Overall, MST4Life™ has contributed towards St Basils achieving their: “strategic aim to work with University partners, codify and publish their experiences and practices, and influence policy and commissioning at regional and national levels” [S10].