Research | SHaRON - Support Hope & Recovery / Resources Online Network

Lancaster University – from 2022 to 2025

Alongside Berkshire Healthcare’s Research and Development team, SHaRON is working in partnership with Lancaster University on their ‘improving Peer Online Forums’ (iPOF) research project.

The 3-year project is being funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and involves other forums providing similar services.

The research aims to explore:

How online mental health forums work
Why some forums work better than others
Why some people find forums helpful and others do not

Find out more about iPOF on the Lancaster University website

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Research papers

Realist synthesis paper

We're pleased to bring you the published findings for 'Understanding the Impacts of Online Mental Health Peer Support Forums: Realist Synthesis', which has produced five main theory areas.

Suitability of transformer models paper

Dr Matt Coole led a paper titled: 'Exploring the Suitability of Transformer Models to Analyse Mental Health Peer Support Forum Data for a Realist Evaluation'.

Protocol paper

Our protocol paper is published in the journal BMJ Open. It outlines why and how we'll conduct the study, analyse the data, and publish the results. The paper is titled: 'Improving Peer Online Forums (iPOF): protocol for a realist evaluation of peer online mental health forums to inform practice and policy'.

iPOF survey protocol

The survey protocol outlines how we will manage and analyse the survey data.

Research projects

Ofcom – 2023

SHaRON supported Ofcom in a project to identify how individuals’ media literacy (their “ability to use, understand and create media and communications in a variety of contexts”) affected their online behaviours and experiences, and the impact that had on their mental health.

University of Reading – 2021

This research centred around the benefits SHaRON provided to staff and service provision.

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine – 2015

We worked with Johnson & Johnson (previously known as Janssen) to establish and understand the benefits that peer-to-peer support can bring to patients with eating disorders.