London Nightline
To provide confidential listening, support and information to students in London throughout the night.
Idea for research
Idea for research
London Nightline supports students through phone lines and instant messaging (IM). While Nightline logs every contact it receives, very little analysis has been conducted on this rich data.
This research project would expand on the "Why do students call London Nightline?" project in the sense of analysing group differences in presenting theme profiles between call and IM contacts. The project would involve basic inferential statistics used to analyse whether calls and IMs differ in the themes students discuss through them.
Impact of idea
The impact of the research project would be both internal and external. Internally, the resulting data would be used to inform training, for example if the study found that students are more likely to present as anxious over phone lines than through IMs, more channel-appropriate roleplays could be conducted on this particular presenting theme.
In terms of external impact, Nightlines broadly form an important piece of the student mental health landscape. With many listening charities now running multi-channel support, a project describing the potential differences in presenting themes over different channels could have implications for other listening services.
We would welcome if the student wanted to further collaborate with us to create an executive summary for training purposes, or to collaborate on a publishable research paper. Whether the student would choose to further collaborate with us on the publishable study or not, they would of course be fully credited.

If you have any existing data or information you would like included in a project, please tell us what kind of data these are

What new data or information would you like to be collected in this project?

Application process
Application criteria
We are looking for someone enthusiastic about the topic of student mental health, and for someone able to handle contact with potentially emotionally sensitive themes (e.g. abuse). While the project would not involve reading of any stories, only an analysis of the overarching contact themes, we recognise that this can still be emotionally difficult for many people.
If the student had experience with volunteering for London Nightline or another listening service, and/or had experience with quantitative data analysis, this would be a plus, although it is by no means a prerequisite.
DBS needed
No
Is this project fully accessible to students with the disabilities?
Yes
Disabilities information
The project would be done remotely and would mostly be self-directed. Because of this flexibility the project should accommodate most types of disabilities. If you would like to discuss any accommodations you would require, please don't hesitate to get in touch!