It’s all about inclusion

Through our work with vulnerable and disadvantaged communities we recognised a need for an evaluative measure that could assess mental health, wellbeing improvements in a more inclusive way than a traditional written questionnaire. This led to the development of a partnership with Professor Jason Davies of Swansea University Psychology Department.  Jason has worked with Down to Earth for many years and has produced a number of published, peer reviewed papers in the Journal of Mental Health including “The emoji current mood and experience scale: the development and initial validation of an ultra-brief, literacy independent measure of psychological health“ which has formed the basis of “My Emoji”.  You can find more about the published papers on our work here.

Based on this research there is now a 5 question measure that uses emojis to provide a quick measure of mood and current experience, with minimal literacy demands on participants.

How has it been developed?

Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund “Growing Great Ideas” programme, Down to Earth have been working with  Big Lemon, a company that design and build digital products that empower others to deliver positive change, to develop a web based application .

How do we use it?

Participants register through the app which gives them a unique code. They then complete the measure at the beginning of the programme and towards the end of the programme (or morning and afternoon if it is a one day programme) to determine any changes to scores. This data is anonymised and analysed in the administration dashboard.

Who is this for?

This measure is for anyone wanting to inclusively measure wellbeing changes.  Although this it is particularly suited for health boards and organisations working with people from more marginalized and vulnerable backgrounds, My Emoji is suitable for any user group.  My emoji – Fy emoji will have access initially only for Down to Earth but with the aim of soon enabling multiple user access. It is envisaged that pilot projects may be administered through Down to Earth in the first instance as the product develops.