In sum, limitations of previous work demonstrate the abject nature of the current field in respect to key assumptions (i.e., transitions as a static timepoint), with significant consequences for identifying and addressing emotional wellbeing and mental health at a critical juncture. Overcoming this, the overarching aim of this project is:

P-S WELLS will be co-produced with children to draw on their valuable lived-experience and needs. This will ensure the scale is (a) accessible (language and format), (b) sensitive and has a positive discourse, so it is motivating for children to complete and does not give a negative message about secondary school, and (c) contextually relevant to children’s experience, environments, and conceptualisations of emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions. In Phase 1, we will form a young person advisory group of six Year 6 (P7) and Year 7 (S1) children (equivalent in Scotland), whom are about to or just moved to secondary school. We will also form an adult advisory group with members from relevant English and Scottish Parliament committees, education and mental health practitioners and researchers, to draw on their valuable expertise and experience within primary-secondary school transitions and emotional wellbeing practice and research. We will meet with our advisory groups at each phase of our project, which will ensure research and community expectations are aligned.

Addressing objective 2, in Phase 1, we will combine both deductive and inductive methods, drawing on the first-hand expertise and experience of children, educational practitioners and researchers, to (a) provide a working knowledge of our construct domain (emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions), (b) specify the boundaries, identify domains, sub-domains, indicators and develop a pool of candidate items, and (c) consider the format of P-S WELLS. This phase is key to obtain content validation.

This phase will allow assessment of face and content validity by ensuring (a) items reflect our conceptual domain, (b) item answers produce valid measurements, meaningful to our end-users, and (c) measurement error and cognitive burden is minimised.

See Data collection details above. This phase will assess the longitudinal and predictive validity through cross-validation and replication of P-S WELLS in a new and independent sample, enabling us to further assess stability and sensitivity. This will include 4a. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) which will assess the structural validity of P-S WELLS. Traditional model and item fit indices will be used to explore the structural validity of P-S WELLS using CFA and item response theory analysis. In addition, we will also conduct 4b. Reliability Analysis, 4c. Longitudinal assessment of measurement invariance and 4d. Validity assessments (see rationale above).

Innovating wider primary-secondary school transitions research, we will conduct latent growth curve modelling (LGCM) and latent class analysis (LCA) on the data collected at Phase 4, which will further enrich our understanding of changes in emotional wellbeing over primary-secondary school transitions. Using P-S WELLS scores across time, we will examine (a) the overall change in emotional wellbeing across primary-secondary school transitions for our sample (LGCM), (b) whether there are different patterns of change for certain subgroups of pupils (LCA), and (c) what predicts membership to specific groups characterised by different profiles of change (LCA). This will show how P-S WELLS can meaningfully capture variation in environmental experience, psychological constructs, and/or subjective experience longitudinally to explain adjustment during primary-secondary school transitions. This will have practical real-world implications in enabling researchers and practitioners to identify children who might be particularly vulnerable during primary-secondary school transitions and what targeted support could be useful.

P-S WELLS, scale development and administration procedures, scaling and scoring, and psychometric evaluation findings, will be written in an open-access technical manual so researchers and educational practitioners can assess the rigour and adequacy and use P-S WELLS in their work. The format of P-S WELLS will be co-produced using creative techniques, with children. To do this, we will hold two young people research consultation days (3 hours each) for 12 children (including members of our young person advisory group).

There is no shared understanding amongst researchers, professionals, and policy makers about the conceptualisation of primary-secondary school transitions and emotional wellbeing (Bagnall & Jindal-Snape, 2023). Furthermore, there is absence of children’s conceptualisations of these key constructs. Addressing these limitations, at the outset of the project at Phase 1b and 1c, we will obtain conceptualisations of (a) primary-secondary school transitions, (b) emotional wellbeing and (c) emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions, from experts by experience (e.g., children, educational practitioners) as well as by knowledge (e.g., researchers with empirical, theoretical and psychometrics expertise). This will ensure that our model of emotional wellbeing, is contextually and experientially relevant to stakeholder’s lived experience of primary-secondary school transitions, as well as being empirically informed.

In addition, self-report scales developed to date to measure children’s primary-secondary school transitions experiences and/or emotional wellbeing, have been designed by researchers, often for specific studies. Our protocol aims to offer further conceptual innovation, by demonstrating the importance, as well as the viability of co-producing a scale, authentically and meaningfully, with end-users, from design (including the grant proposal) to dissemination.

Emotional wellbeing is a dynamic construct, subject to fluctuations over time in response to changing external and internal conditions. Similarly, school transition is an ongoing, longitudinal process. However, primary-secondary school transitions scales are limited in their (a) design, in that they are not sensitive and stable enough to capture the complex changes children are negotiating over primary-secondary school transitions and (b) operationalisation, with a reliance on pre/post designs.

As outlined in this protocol, to overcome (a) we will combine qualitative and quantitative methods, in addition to drawing on lived experiences of children over time, to ensure that our conceptual model of emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions, operationalised through P-S WELLS, is sensitive to children’s changing experiences. Furthermore, we aim to pilot and conduct longitudinal psychometric assessment (Phase 3) and longitudinal validation (Phase 4) on two discrete samples, across two transitions periods; the latter consisting of five time points, to assess the stability of the scale longitudinally.

Retaining research participants over primary-secondary school transition is consistently shown as a challenge within the field (Bagnall et al., 2021a, forthcoming; Jindal-Snape et al., 2019). To overcome this, we are working with partners from our universities Initial Teacher Education network, in addition to our TCELT network, to develop a recruitment strategy, such that it presents as little burden as possible, while also minimising bias, e.g. to minimise containment bias, children will only participate in one phase of data collection, and allocation of children to participate in phases will be at random on a school level. We are also financially reimbursing our participating schools for their time and effort.

Embedded in a school context, the study will adhere to the British Educational Research Association’s (BERA) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, and to the participating schools’ internal policies on professional standards and conduct, safeguarding, data protection, and confidentiality. Furthermore, prior to any fieldwork activity commencing, ethical approval for the study will be obtained from our universities Research Ethics Committee’s (UREC) standards for research governance, ethics, and integrity.

It is worth noting that the nature of the project – wellbeing - means that there will be a focus on children’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, which may inadvertently be stressful or upsetting for some. However, this is very rare and likely to only cause temporary distress (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al., 2006), and as a mitigation we have a clear distress protocol as part of our standardised instructions, in addition to signposted sources of support (e.g. parent/guardian, Childline, member of school staff) in our debrief. Furthermore, our P-S WELLS scale, and the other scales that we will use are in line with scales recommended in routine assessment and monitoring as part of a whole school approach to mental health promotion by the Department for Education (DfE, 2021). Research has also indicated that engaging in wellbeing research can facilitate positive reflective processes among children (Demkowicz et al, 2020), which we have shown to date through discussions within our P-S WELLS advisory group.