Brainjuicer
Project briefing
The RSA has teamed up with market research company Brainjuicer on a project to create a web based, interactive attitude and behaviour assessment tool that aims to encourage young people to:
- think about how and why they make decisions and recognise where they are generally better at making decisions than others;
- think about the effects that those decisions might have on what they hope to achieve or avoid in their lives;
- encourage attitudinal or behavioural change where the user considers it necessary.
Decision making, behaviour change and young people
Young people need to be responsible for making change happen in their own lives. They need to identify goals in life and analyse their motives for making decisions. This understanding must be then supported by information and guidance to help them make the right choices.
Government campaigns for young people have often sought to change their attitudes to, for example; drinking, smoking, sexual behaviour, driving and education. Yet these campaigns are often ineffectual, and not enough is known about why this is so.
The RSA has a long history of working to encourage positive and enterprising behaviours and attitudes in young people. Most recently, the RSA Risk Commission's work on risk and childhood suggested that children and young people need the opportunities to seek excitement, and to learn to identify and manage the risks in their lives.
Young people today face an array of uncertainties. These range from personal and physical threats, to uncertainty about choosing a direction at school or in relationships. Furthermore, documented cases of depression in today's youth are on the rise. Yet, we believe solutions lie in encouraging and generating a skills and competence base among the young so that they can understand:
- the importance of managing their own time, and develop preferred techniques for doing so;
- what is meant by managing change, and develop a range of techniques for use in varying situations;
- the importance both of celebrating success and managing disappointment, and ways of handling these;
- what is meant by being entrepreneurial and initiative-taking, and how to develop capacities for these;
- how to manage risk and uncertainty, the wide range of contexts in which these will be encountered, and techniques for managing them.
This thinking also underpins the RSA's Opening Minds Curriculum Framework.
Our response
This project will pilot a pioneering online gaming tool that will enable young people to generate some of the skills we believe are needed to make positive choices about risk. This will be aimed at 11 to 18- year-olds and seeks to encourage young people to think about the decisions they make and how they might impact upon their lives.
The project is being funded by NESTA from their Taking a Leap Portfolio which aims to inspire enterprising attitudes and behaviours around risk-taking in young people or the professionals who work with them.
