Research Associate of Mental Health

Research Associate of Mental Health 

A Research Associate is required to support a Wellcome Trust funded research programme aimed to improve understanding of mental health treatment effectiveness in children and young people. This position utilises mixed methods, and thus a strong quantitative background and some experience working with research participants or patients is required.

The Research Associate will lead on all aspects of a qualitative study to explore young people's experiences of mental health services, being responsible for: preparing materials for Patient and Public Involvement groups, completing the ethics application, recruiting young people and carers for qualitative interviews, screening respondents for eligibility, arranging and conducting the interviews, and facilitating transcription. The Research Associate will lead on the qualitative analysis and draft a resulting manuscript. The challenges, priorities, and factors influencing treatment response identified from this study will help inform subsequent quantitative analyses.

For the quantitative aspect of the role, the Research Associate will perform secondary analyses of population-based data sets of children and young people's mental health, which collectively consist of over 20,000 participants. Data sets consist of the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, MYRAID, and Understanding Society. The successful candidate will lead on linking these data sets to NHS and educational data as well as cleaning, coding, and preparing this documentation. NHS data sets include the Mental Health Services Data Set and Hospital Episode Statistics. The Research Associate will lead on longitudinal analyses of change in service contacts, including measurements before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will contribute to manuscripts associating service use with mental health out