School-level digital Dashboard

Find out more about the School Health Research Network (SHRN) school-level digital Dashboard, and view a demonstration.

View a public demonstration version of our school-level digital Dashboard prototype here

View prototype

Information on coding used to build the Dashboard can be found here

View information

What is the aim of the Dashboard?

The aim of the dashboard is to empower schools to use research data to create environments that promote good mental and physical health. The School Level Dashboard was developed as part of a Mental Health Data Prize project, funded by Wellcome.

What data does the Dashboard display?

We have worked with the School Health Research Network (SHRN) in Wales. Every two years SHRN conducts a national survey of student health and wellbeing survey in secondary schools. In 2021/22 the survey was completed by approximately 125,000 11- to 16-year-olds across 202 schools in Wales (95% of all maintained secondary schools).

Our dashboard enables each of these schools to view their data in different ways and to use it to inform how they promote healthy school environments. Data presented to schools is anonymised and displayed by year group and gender. No individual student data is ever shared.

The demonstration version of the Dashboard is populated with ‘dummy’ data (no real school data is included). It will show you what schools will see when they log in to the Dashboard, and the different ways in which they can interrogate their SHRN data.

The SHRN survey covers a range of topics including:

Wellbeing and emotional health, and key factors which shape them such as school connectedness
Physical activity
Food
School life
Substance use and misuse
Sex and relationships

The SHRN survey forms part of the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Every four years, health and wellbeing surveys in 49 countries use a common set of measures to assess the health and wellbeing of young people. SHRN (in Wales) is one of these 49 surveys. Our Dashboard therefore has strong potential to be used by other research across many countries.

How can schools use the Dashboard?

We have created the Dashboard for use by secondary schools which are part of the School Health Research Network (SHRN) in Wales. In the future we plan to work with other researchers so that they adapt the Dashboard for their studies.

SHRN schools will be able to:

View results on each outcome for their students overall, specific year groups, and by gender
Compare school level and national level data
Track changes over time (as the survey is repeated every two years).

This data in intended to support schools to identify priorities for action when promoting healthy school environments.

How can other researchers use the Dashboard?

We have designed the Dashboard so that it can adapted by other researchers for their surveys. Other researchers will be able to replicate our approach and to adapt the dashboard to share research data with the organisations that they work with, including schools. You can find more information about the underlying code used to build the Dashboard here.

Survey outcome measures are widely used by other researchers, which will help them to adapt the Dashboard for their own studies. For instance, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) measures form part of the section on wellbeing and emotional health. Other researchers can use the Dashboard to present data they have on these measures, or adapt the Dashboard to display other sets of data.