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

在青春期，年轻人的社会生活变得越来越复杂。从童年中期开始，已经有很好的证据表明，建立、管理和维持社会关系（或“社会能力”）的能力差异很重要：这个年龄段的社会能力差预示着孤独、后来的心理健康问题、较差的学业成绩，甚至工作困难。最近在确定了解他人的心理状态（有时称为“读心术”）作为一种重要的基本机制方面取得了重大进展，为支持和干预提供了可行的目标。我们有充分的理由相信，读心术也将成为青少年后期和成年早期社会能力的重要基础，但读心术的性质及其因果关系很可能会随着年轻人社会世界的急剧变化而沿着改变。例如，15-24岁这段时期涉及教育和工作场所之间以及家庭、同伴和浪漫关系之间的重大社会转变。这也是精神疾病的严重风险期，往往会造成终身后果。理解读心术与这些社会和心理健康结果之间的关系对年轻人的心理健康和福祉具有重要意义，并将建议教育和工作环境如何更好地支持这些结果。首先是因为我们缺乏对年轻人敏感和有意义的强大的读心术措施。我们将应用黄金-标准的心理测量方法来开发一种新的读心术测量方法，这种方法在青春期中期到成年早期是适当的，有效的和敏感的。我们将与年轻人在故事交流研讨会，以确保读心术的场景和问题是相关的和有意义的。我们将在3000名15-24岁的年轻人中检查该指标的表现，并检查测量结果是否稳定，以及不同人口群体的公平性。我们将测试对心理健康的预测（例如，抑郁、焦虑）和社会福利（例如，孤独和社会支持）。为了最大限度地发挥新措施的效益，我们将与计算机科学家合作，开发一个可靠的、开放的系统，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，而是能够将参与者的响应上传到安全的远程服务器，并在几分钟内收到准确编码的响应。这些步骤将使心理学、精神病学和教育领域的广泛研究人员能够在自己的研究中采用我们的方法，从而最大限度地提高研究能力。开发一种新的读心术测量方法，将为旨在促进青年福祉的研究方案带来广泛的潜在好处。在拟议的工作中，我们将为理解教育和工作场所内读心术的原因和后果奠定基础，以及这些机构和组织如何在支持读心术以及相关福利和心理健康方面发挥作用。为了实现这一目标，我们计划举办一系列研讨会，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。这将有助于我们结合青年人遇到的真实的制度来解释我们的调查结果，并为确定特别关切的问题、最佳做法的实例和今后工作中将探讨的改进做法的机会奠定基础。

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.