Measuring student and staff wellbeing and resilience - a year on from Covid-19 snapshot study to inform future evaluation of interventions for improving student and staff mental health, wellbeing and inclusion.

This project lays the foundation for a progressive research programme to capitalise upon and underpin the University of Portsmouth’s innovative, sector-leading approach to improving university staff and student mental health and wellbeing.

The recently-launched University Mental Health Charter clarifies the principles to action the landmark Universities UK #stepchange framework, which advocates that universities ‘reconfigure themselves as health-promoting and supportive environments’ within a whole-institution approach to student mental health. The University of Portsmouth’s Student Wellbeing Service has taken a strategic position as the hub for the University’s whole-institution approach, developing the innovative Wellbeing for Learning model to provide a conceptual framework emphasising an educational, as opposed to medicalised or ‘deficit-focused’, approach to the issue of mental health.

This proposed project follows through the project Measuring Student and Staff Wellbeing and resilience a year on. It follows the opportunity presented by the Covid-19 crisis to conduct a mixed methods study providing a snapshot of current student and staff wellbeing and resilience in the face of the presenting life and learning challenges with moving to remote working practises and social isolation. The study will offer an opportunity to test and consolidate quantitative and qualitative measures of wellbeing and resilience compatible with the development of a larger scale evaluation of the Wellbeing for Learning approach. The aim would be to lay the foundation for an ambitious and extensive research programme centred on this innovative model for intervention and drawing on research capacity and expertise from across the University.