The SCAMP Research Challenge programme: Co-developing research with young people for young people.
Curtis, N., Thompson, R., Cheng, L., Shen, C., Smith, R., Biswas-Evans, R., Di Simplicio, M., Toledano, M. B.
public and global health
Quick verdict
A youth co-production programme report: 1,982 SCAMP recruits via peer-led school teams; credible and detailed, but headline comparative claims lack data.
Summary
This preprint reports the SCAMP Research Challenge (RC), a two-year youth participation programme embedded in the SCAMP adolescent cohort study. Across 2022–2024, 19 Greater London secondary schools nominated student teams who led peer recruitment, co-organised in-school data collections, and developed research proposals; seven winning teams advanced with structured training. The programme recruited 1,982 new participants (1,103 in Year 1; 879 in Year 2) and produced seven co-developed projects on topics including social media use, gaming and mental health; six are reportedly in submission preparation and one published. The authors claim peer-led recruitment achieved higher participation in shorter timeframes than earlier researcher-led waves, and students reported gains in confidence and transferable skills, with sustained engagement via a Young People's Advisory Group and a follow-on intervention (Scroll Smart Study). Main limitations: the central efficiency claim is not supported by comparative figures, denominators or response rates; feedback evaluation relies on unnamed questionnaires with no instrument, response rate or analysis reported; teacher nomination of teams and restriction to small schools (<700 pupils) introduce unquantified selection bias; and publication claims are uncited. Figures 1–3 (timeline, participation breakdown, campaigns) could not be assessed from the text. As a descriptive programme report it is valuable and candid, but its evaluative conclusions require more rigorous, transparently reported evidence.
Review complete
Assessment at a glance
4
risk flags identified
● high 0
● medium 3
● low 1
4 strengths · 5 weaknesses · 5 author questions
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Key claims under review
- Peer-led recruitment by student teams added 1,982 new SCAMP participants across two academic years, achieving higher participation in shorter timeframes than prior researcher-led approaches.
- Embedding young people across the full research pipeline — recruitment, study delivery, quantitative analysis and dissemination — is feasible in school settings and yields gains in confidence, skills and empowerment.
- Seven co-developed student research projects were produced; six are reportedly in preparation for journal submission and one has been published.
- Teacher-nominated team selection and inconsistent school logistics introduced opportunity bias that future iterations should address through transparent, standardised recruitment.
Strengths
Concrete, unusually large-scale participatory outcomes
One of the few documented youth co-production models spanning the full quantitative research pipeline: peer-led recruitment, co-delivered tiered data collections (Table 1), proposal development with six named scoring criteria, and progression to analysis and dissemination across two full delivery cycles.
Documented iterative refinement
Year 2 adaptations (scheduled virtual check-ins, interactive kick-offs, flexible full/partial school participation, NHS CRN partnerships) are explicitly traced to Year 1 feedback, and the design lessons visibly carry into the wider SCAMP programme (Scroll Smart Study).
Candid limitation disclosure
Transferable programme documentation
Weaknesses
Headline efficiency claim unsupported by comparative data
No evaluation methodology for student-outcome claims
Unquantified selection bias
Unverifiable outcome claims and reference defects
Co-production depth limited at the analysis stage
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Scope & Claims
This preprint is a descriptive programme report, not an empirical hypothesis test. It documents the SCAMP Research Challenge (RC), a youth co-production programme run twice (academic years 2022–23 and 2023–24) within the SCAMP cohort of 12,000+ Greater London adolescents (ref 10). Four objectives are stated: expand recruitment via peer-led methods, deliver in-school data collections, support student research proposals, and advance selected projects collaboratively. The headline claims are that RC teams recruited 1,982 new participants (1,103 in Year 1; 879 in Year 2) 'achieving higher participation rates within shorter timeframes than prior researcher-led approaches' (Abstract, repeated in Findings and Discussion), and that co-development produced seven projects (six in submission preparation, one published) plus durable engagement via the YPAG, Research Ambassadors and the Scroll Smart Study intervention.
The remaining sections cover Methodology Assessment, Statistical Evidence, Results & Reproducibility, Limitations & Risks, and Verdict & Recommendations.
- All 4 strengths & 5 weaknesses, analyzed in detail
- 4 risk flags with severity, section & reviewer questions
- Methods & statistical evidence assessment
- 5 questions a peer reviewer would ask
- Full six-dimension evaluation report & recommendations
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Frequently asked questions
What is the SCAMP Research Challenge?
A year-long programme run twice (2022–2024) by Imperial College London within the SCAMP cohort study, in which student teams from 19 Greater London secondary schools led peer recruitment, co-organised in-school data collections, and developed research questions using SCAMP data; seven winning teams received further training and co-developed research projects with researchers.
How many participants did the Research Challenge recruit?
1,982 new participants — 1,103 in Year 1 (Nov 2022–Feb 2023) and 879 in Year 2 (Nov 2023–Jun 2024) — across 19 schools. Participants completed an online assessment (£5 voucher) and could add saliva, urine and physical measures for £10 total, under a four-tier participation menu.
Did the peer-led approach actually outperform researcher-led recruitment?
The authors claim higher participation in shorter timeframes than earlier researcher-led waves, but the paper reports no comparative numbers, denominators or response rates from those waves, so the claim cannot be verified from the data presented.
What happened to the students' research projects?
Seven projects were selected (three from Year 1, four from Year 2) on topics such as social media use, gaming and cognition. The paper states six are being prepared for journal submission and one Year 1 project has been published, though no citation is provided. The programme also informed a follow-on peer-led intervention, the Scroll Smart Study, evaluated as a randomised trial.
About this review
This is an AI-generated preliminary review by Evolve.Pub, produced from the openly available text of the paper. It is not peer review and does not represent the authors' views. The canonical record of the paper is at the publisher link above.
- Figures 1–3 (timeline, participation-rate breakdown, campaign examples) could not be assessed from the extracted text; Figure 2 may contain comparative participation data that would bear directly on the central efficiency claim.
- medRxiv preprint, not peer reviewed; extracted text appears complete through references, but supplementary material may exist and was not available.
- Comparative recruitment benchmarks (prior SCAMP waves) are never given numerically in the prose; my assessment of that claim assumes no such data appear in the unextractable figures.
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