OxWell Student Survey

OxWell STUDENT Survey - 2025 

The most recent wave of the survey took place from February - March 2025. Over 35,000 students participated from 100 educational institutions. We have built a new data platform 'OxHub' for schools and local authority partners to directly access their data. For more information, please see OxWell website where resources and a video about findings for students is available.

Summary Of OxWell 2025 (Ethical Approval Reference: R62366/RE017)

We are incredibly grateful to all the young people who took part in the survey and for the continued partnership of our schools and local authority partners, who invest considerable time and effort into the study. 

We have devoted ourselves to sharing these findings with those who can make a real difference in young people's mental health and well-being. For example:

Sharing with schools 

Every school that participates in the OxWell Student Survey received non-identifiable school-level results to help them better understand their student body. We have shared our findings at meetings with central government, NHS England, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and mental health commissioners across the country. 

Sharing with other researchers 

We have a team of nearly 50 researchers across 15 universities looking at OxWell data. We have published 26 papers on our findings and presented at over forty academic conferences. Some key areas of interest for our team include

• Mental health services and support
• Self-harm and mental illness
• Neurodiversity
• School culture and environment
• Friendships and interpersonal relationships
• Gaming and social media influences
• Sleep and physical activity

We also encourage any interested researcher to apply to access the data (more information below).

Sharing with the public 

OxWell findings have had substantial media coverage on a national and international stage, with over >250 media outlets having reported on our research. We have also shared findings through podcasts hosted by the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and others, which are all freely-available for anyone to listen to.

PREVIOUS INFORMATION FOR PARTICIPANTS AND PARENTS

For parents and participants 16 years of age and older, the 2025 Parent Information Sheet can be found here, and some frequently asked questions can be found here. Parents of pupils under 16 years of age are sent the information sheet and provided with instructions on how to opt-out by contacting the school directly.

Ethical Approval

The OxWell Student Survey (2025) has been approved by the University of Oxford Research Ethics Committee (Reference: R62366/RE017).

INFORMATION FOR RESEARCHERS

The study protocol has been published in BMJ Open. Further information about the research programme, publications, academic collaborators and previous OxWell survey questions (including all variable guides) can be found on the OSF platform.

We are always interested in hearing from researchers who wish to use the OxWell data (free of charge). We encourage you to either contact researchers in the team directly, or through the team email (oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk). Please look at the OSF pre-registrations directory to learn more about ongoing analyses. Requests to access the 2023 data via the BrainWaves Hub can now be made via this form.

Funding Information

This project has received funding and support from the Oxford and Thames Valley NIHR Applied Research Collaboration and the Westminster Foundation along with support from Liverpool City Council and Oxfordshire County Council. We also thank Bukhman Philanthropies for generously supporting the development of the OxWell data platform (OxHub), strengthening its impact for schools and partners in future waves. Participating local authorities and clinical commissioning partners contribute to the running costs of the survey. Previous surveys have received funding from Oxford Health NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, and the MRC Mental Health Data Pathfinder (Oxford).