Mental health issues are prevalent and growing in student populations Following the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resultant lockdowns, the academic curriculum switched to a primarily on-line model, which also presented stark issues for students – not only as a result of increased nationwide stressors, but the shift to online tutoring coupled to the lack of social contact in this new context presents a very different academic experience. 

The Science of Happiness

Professor Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the University of Bristol, and his team had previously embedded an in-person positive psychology course – ‘The Science of Happiness’ – within the University curriculum. This aimed to teach positive psychology techniques to students with the aim of enhancing mental wellbeing. The emergence of COVID, and the necessitated shift to online learning, altered the paradigm – but also presented a research opportunity, as Professor Hood explains.

“Psychoeducational courses such as The Science of Happiness have been demonstrated to benefit student wellbeing,” said Professor Hood, “but it was unclear if the benefits would be maintained as the courses transferred to online settings – as necessitated by COVID.”

Professor Hood and colleague, Dr Sarah Jelbert, used a Mental Health Research grant funded by the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute and the Rosetrees Trust to investigate. First-year undergraduate students who had opted to attend the course were split into two cohorts – those who completed the course in the first semester (166 students) and those scheduled to complete it in the second (198 students). The team collected wellbeing data at the beginning and ends of semesters 1 and 2.

The protective effect

“We found that, despite the challenges of a pandemic lockdown, first year university students taking the course online in the first semester experienced positive benefits to mental well-being,” said Professor Hood. “Those students waiting to take the course in the second semester showed a decline in mental well-being and an increase in anxiety, but participants who completed the course in the first semester showed stable levels of mental wellbeing and anxiety throughout the course – and 6 weeks later. This suggests that the “Science of Happiness” course has a protective effect on wellbeing during an especially stressful time.”

Professor Hood’s team found that the benefits of the online course were similar to previous studies investigating the ‘in-person’ version of the course – so online courses may potentially provide relatively cheap, flexible and efficient psychological support infrastructure to students in the future.

A gentle nudge

Professor Hood then used a COVID-19 Rapid Research Call from the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute to investigate whether ‘remote nudging’ via a mobile phone app might bestow further benefits:

“We randomly selected a cohort of 80 students and staff who had registered for the course,” explained Professor Hood. “This cohort received additional support in the form of direct messaging contact with a coach every two or three days through the “Nudge” app on their phone, and administered self-report measures of mental wellbeing before and after the course. The group who received nudging reported a significantly greater increase in the primary measure of mental wellbeing as well as increases in their engagement and willingness to continue the positive activities in future, so the use of mobile app ‘nudges’ is clearly worth considering in this context.”

Language is key

Lastly, Professor Hood and his team are currently analysing a further project which analyses the written language used as part of the course. Nearly 1,000 consenting students from the 2020/21 and 2021/22 University year groups were tasked with completing ten, weekly, online journal entries which related to different positive psychology interventions, such as acts of kindness, gratitude, and signature strengths. They also gave a weekly rating of their happiness on the previous day, and completed pre- and post-course standardised questionnaires of mental wellbeing.

“There are a lot of journal entries – 5,983 in total,” said Professor Hood. “So far, we have conducted preliminary analyses for descriptive information after cleaning up the text. We have also cleaned and analysed the pre- and post-course mental health questionnaires.”

The team will be investigating a variety of research questions, such as whether the language changes throughout the course, whether there is any relationship between the language used and reported happiness; whether any changes can predict post-course wellbeing, whether there are any subgroups of students with similar language changes, and whether language use can predict course engagement.

Collaborations

“We have formed a collaboration with Dr Myles-Jay Linton from the Bristol Medical School, who has previously completed an analysis of the 2019/20 cohort data,” said Professor Hood. “Additionally, we have begun a collaboration with Nello Cristianini, Professor of artificial intelligence at the Intelligent Systems Laboratory to look at the predictive value of diary entries on mental wellbeing.”

However, despite this work, there is much left to do. Professor Hood will be expanding his research on the effects of the Science of Happiness course within more diverse populations, within additional schools and colleges which vary in location, student demographics and courses taught.

Truncate to disseminate

“Since the start of this project, we have helped the University of Cardiff to deliver a shortened, four-week version of the course,” Professor Hood said. “Students there are also reporting increased levels of wellbeing – and we are also currently running the shortened course in collaboration with the South Western Ambulance Service Trusts to promote psychological wellbeing in staff, and the East Norfolk Sixth Form college to promote wellbeing in students within an economically deprived area.”

“Embedding positive psychology courses such as this within university curricula is an effective and efficient method of targeting wellbeing in students,” said Professor Hood.

“Our online course had a similar protective effect on student mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. With more research, we can further augment our findings, and find the most effective way to enhance student wellbeing in a variety of in-person and online academic settings.”