About the Project

We invite you to participate in an online research project investigating biological, psychological and socio-economic risk factors for long-term physical and mental health disorders together with associated health service use. This information will guide our clinically informed decisions in helping improve access to health and social services and deliver complementary guided online bio-psycho-social interventions and resources to promote health and well-being in the community. We also include permission to re-contact our volunteers for future research participation including user evaluation, engagement activities and for sign-posting to appropriate interventions.

We are asking residents of the United Kingdom aged 16 years and older to help us by taking part in this project.

Do I have to take part?

Participation in the project is entirely optional. If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time and without giving a reason.

We take confidentiality very seriously. All information collected will be securely held in King’s College London, in compliance with the Data Protection Act (1998), the General Data Protection Regulation (2018), and the university’s Research Data Management Policy.

What does taking part in The HYPE Project involve?

If you agree to take part, you will be asked to complete a consent form. You will then be asked to:

Fill in a short questionnaire about your physical and mental health and some events that you may or may not have experienced in your life. This will take about 40 minutes.
You will be re-contacted about our follow-up and evaluation study, and provided with information about health and social care resources as well as local events and activities. We also may ask you to answer some questions about your experience of using the online research and resource platform together with recent health service use. This will take between 30 and 60 minutes.

What are the possible benefits and risks of taking part?

There are no direct benefits from participating in this study. However, we believe that by participating, this will allow us to explore the needs of young people. This will aid future policies and improvements to health services that will help people in the community.

We hope that the information you provide us with can help us to provide appropriate guided online resources to promote health and well-being. These will be revised based on the feedback from our participants. Your anonymised data may be archived for use by other researchers in similar studies.

There are no major risks involved in taking part in this study. If you feel uncomfortable with any of the questions you do not have to answer them.

In addition, you may also withdraw any information you provide us with, within one month after completing the study. This can be done over the telephone; contact details of the research team can be found at the bottom of this webpage.

What will happen to the results of the study?

We would like to discuss findings from completed studies in public meetings which we will inform our volunteers via The HYPE Project website and a regular newsletter. Results will also disseminated through scientific publication, conference/workshop presentations and user/carer groups. The volunteers’ names will not be mentioned in any report or publication, and data published will be presented at the group level to minimise risks of tracing to any individual.

What if I have further questions, or if something goes wrong?

If you have any questions or require more information about this study, please contact me using the following contact details: Dr. Cerisse Gunasinghe – email: hype@kcl.ac.uk, Tel: 0203 8480462, Address: Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, 16 De Crespigny Road, SE5 8AB.

Want to know more? Download the study Information Sheet. You can also download the Easy Read Version.