Developing a measure of social understanding for 15- 24-year-olds that is appropriate, fair, valid, and theoretically motivated.

在青春期，年轻人的社交生活变得越来越复杂。从童年中期就已经有很好的证据表明，建立、管理和维持社会关系的能力(或“社交能力”)的差异很重要：这个年龄段的社交能力差预示着孤独、以后的心理健康问题、学习成绩差，甚至工作上的困难。最近在确定对他人精神状态的理解(有时称为“思想恐惧”)方面取得了重大进展，这是一种重要的潜在机制，为支持和干预提供了一个可行的目标。我们完全有理由预计，在青春期后期和成年初期，担心也将是社交能力的重要基础，但恐惧的性质及其原因和后果很可能会随着年轻人社交世界的急剧变化而改变。例如，15-24日期间涉及教育和工作场所之间的重大社会转型，以及家庭、同伴和浪漫关系之间的重大社会转型。这也是精神疾病的严重风险时期，往往会产生终生后果。了解恐惧与这些社交和心理健康结果之间的关系对年轻人的心理健康和幸福感有着重要的影响，并将提出教育和工作环境可能更好地支持这些结果的方法。这种潜力目前很难实现，首先是因为我们缺乏对年轻人敏感和有意义的强大的恐惧措施。我们将应用黄金标准的心理测量学方法来开发一种新的恐惧措施，在青春期中期到成年早期是适当的、有效的和敏感的。我们将在故事交流研讨会上与年轻人合作，以确保令人难忘的场景和问题具有相关性和意义。我们将在3000名15-24岁的年轻人中检查这项测量的表现，并检查不同人口群体的测量结果是否稳定和公平。我们将测试对心理健康(例如，抑郁、焦虑)和社交健康(例如，孤独和社会支持)的预测。为了最大限度地发挥新措施的好处，我们将与计算机科学家合作，开发一种可靠的、开放的系统，用于对参与者的回答进行自动编码。使用新任务的研究人员将从数百小时的手动编码中解脱出来，取而代之的是能够将参与者的回答上传到安全的远程服务器，并在几分钟内收到准确编码的回答。这些步骤将使心理学、精神病学和教育学的广泛研究人员能够采用我们的方法进行自己的研究，从而最大限度地提高研究能力的效益。开发一种新的担心措施，将使寻求增进年轻人福祉的研究方案获得广泛的潜在好处。在拟议的工作中，我们将奠定基础，以了解在教育和工作场所担心的原因和后果，以及这些机构和组织如何在支持担心及其对健康和心理健康的相关好处方面发挥作用。为了实现这一目标，我们计划了一系列研讨会，将我们的研究人员与教育工作者、心理健康专业人员和雇主以及对心理健康特别感兴趣的年轻人聚集在一起。这些将帮助我们解释我们关于年轻人遇到的真实制度的调查结果，并为确定特别令人关切的点、最佳做法的范例和改进做法的机会奠定基础，以便在今后的工作中继续努力。

In adolescence the social lives of young people become increasingly complex. There is already good evidence from middle childhood that variation in the ability to build, manage and maintain social relationships (or 'social competence') matters: poor social competence in this age range predicts loneliness, later mental health difficulties, poorer academic outcomes, and even difficulties in work. Significant recent progress has been made in identifying understanding of others' mental states (sometimes called "mindreading") as an important underlying mechanism that provides a viable target for support and intervention. There is every reason to expect that mindreading will also be an important basis of social competence in later adolescence and early adulthood, but it is likely that the nature of mindreading and its causes and consequences will change along with the dramatically changing social world of young people. For example, the period from 15-24 involves major social transitions between places of education and work, and between family, peer and romantic relationships. It is also a period of acute risk for mental ill-health, often with lifelong consequences. Understanding the relationships between mindreading and these social and mental health outcomes has important implications for mental health and wellbeing of young people, and will suggest ways in which environments for education and work might better support these outcomes.This potential is currently difficult to fulfil, firstly because we lack robust measures of mindreading that are sensitive and meaningful for young people.We will apply gold-standard psychometric approaches to develop a new measure of mindreading that is appropriate, valid, and sensitive in mid-adolescence to early adulthood. We will work with young people in story-exchange workshops to ensure that the mindreading scenarios and questions are relevant and meaningful. We will examine the measure's performance in 3000 young people aged 15-24, and check that measurements are stable, and fair across different demographic groups. We will test prediction of mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety) and social wellbeing (e.g., loneliness, and social support). To maximise benefits of the new measure we will work with computer scientists to develop a reliable, open system for automated coding of participant's responses. Researchers using the new task will be relieved of hundreds of hours of manual coding, and will instead be able to upload participant responses to a secure remote server, and receive accurately coded responses within minutes. These steps will maximise the benefits to research capacity by enabling a wide range of researchers in psychology, psychiatry, and education, to adopt our methods for their own research. The development of a new measure of mindreading will enable a wide range of potential benefits to research programmes seeking to advance the wellbeing of young people. Within the proposed work we will lay groundwork for understanding the causes and consequences of mindreading within places of education and work, and how these institutions and organisations can play a role in role in supporting mindreading and related benefits for wellbeing and mental health. To pursue this objective we have planned a series of workshops that will bring our researchers together with educators, mental health professionals, and employers, with young people with a particular interest in mental health. These will help us interpret our findings in relation to the real systems that young people encounter, and lay groundwork for identifying points of particular concern, examples of best practice and opportunities for improved practice that would be pursued in future work.