Youth Participation, Agency and Well-Being in Hospital-Linked Contexts: Evidence From the KIDS Programme.

The design is descriptive and correlational with no comparison group and no follow-up, so it cannot show that taking part caused anything, only that the two things went together. The authors say this themselves, and that the small convenience sample limits statistical generalisability. Well-being was measured only by the adolescents' own ratings of what the programme had done for them, collected in the same questionnaire as the participation items, not by an independent or clinical measure. It is a programme-related perception, not a measure of adolescent mental health. The factor analysis was run with a small sample relative to the number of items, which the authors call a preliminary structural exploration rather than a validation of the instrument. The four profiles rest on small numbers: one of them contained three adolescents, and the authors say the differences between profiles, including any differences by gender or age, should be interpreted cautiously. Only 50 adolescents took part and they came through their local chapters on a voluntary basis, so chapters that were keener to take part are better represented than others, and several chapters contributed only one or two people. No information on race or ethnicity was collected, because recruitment crossed countries with different ways of classifying people.

The funding statement reads "The author has nothing to report", and the author declares no conflicts of interest.

Do not read this as evidence that a youth advisory programme improves adolescents' mental health or school performance. The well-being measures were the adolescents' own ratings of what the programme had done for them, collected in the same questionnaire as the participation measures, with no comparison group and no independent or clinical assessment.