Dear Miss Jordan,
We are writing to ask you, as a principal of a special school, to help us with our research on friendships for young people with a learning disability and/or autism.
We are a small research team of ten researchers: seven young people with a learning barrier who are connected to Mencap, two Mencap youth workers and a PhD candidate from Queen’s University.
We decided that we wanted to do research on friendships because having friends is important to us and young people of our age who have a learning disability and/or autism. We are specifically looking at:
1. How important friends are for young people?
2. How young people make friends?
3. What barriers do young people face when making and keeping friends?
4. What qualities do young people think make a good friend?
5. How are young people supported with their friendships?
6. Why it is important to have good friends?
To find out the answers to these questions we are asking that young people (aged 14-25 with a learning disability/barrier and/or autism), teachers, parents and youth workers take part in an online questionnaire and/or an online interview that can be carried out via email or skype.
What we would like your help with
We would appreciate if you could help us with recruitment of participants from your school community. This would mean sharing the attached posters with your staff, young people or parents within your school community. This email can also be forwarded to help explain what we are asking people to do.
Teacher's questionnaire: https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/KzGrz4
Parent's questionnaire: https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/0cmSc4
Young person's questionnaire:https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/JNfuLz
Youth worker's questionnaire:https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/gqDEgc
As the coronavirus has halted our face-to-face interactions and the participants we had already lined up for interviews and focus groups, we are very keen to continue this research remotely. This will allow us to start writing up our findings and preparing how we share this knowledge in September. We will keep you informed of any event or presentation we will be hosting or any resources or training we might design as a result of this research.
Kind Regards,
Christine Bower, Email: cbower01@qub.ac.uk
PhD Candidate Tel: 07595051775
Yasmin, Mikhaila,
Mencap Youth Workers
Sean, Ashley, Aisling, Calum, Jordan, Riona and Lewis
Young People
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