The ScreenED project aims to develop a brief, high-quality screening tool to detect eating disorders in primary school aged children (i.e., 5-12 years).

We want to create a tool that:

• Can be quickly and easily completed by children and their parents
• Will be used by busy health professionals for picking up eating disorders soon after they begin
• Uses clear, non-stigmatising, age-appropriate, gender-neutral, and culturally safe language
• Assesses risk for a wide range of eating disorders
• Taps early symptoms reported by those with lived experience or their parents, and
• Is freely available to the public

We are inviting:

• Young people with a lived experience of an eating disorder during childhood (when they were aged 5-12 years)
• Parents with experience caring for a child who has or had an eating disorder between the ages of 5 – 12 years.
• Families with at least one parent and one young person with an experience of an eating disorder during childhood (5-12 years)

To be eligible to participate in this research, young people with lived experience need to:

• Have a lived experience of an eating disorder during their primary school years (aged 5 – 12).
• Consider themselves recovered or well enough to participate.
• Be aged between 16 – 20 years and have English language fluency sufficient for focus group participation.
• For those aged under 18 years, we will also require a parent/guardian to consent to your participation. When you complete the enrolment survey, you will be asked to provide an email or phone number for a parent/guardian who can be contacted by the research team.

To be eligible to participate in this research, parents with caring experience need to:

• Be over 18 years of age and have English language fluency sufficient for focus group participation and questionnaire completion.
• Have experience caring for a child (aged 5 – 12 years) with an eating disorder.
• If you have a child with lived experience of an eating disorder (between ages 5-12) who is interested in participating, you may nominate them when you complete the enrolment survey, and they will be contacted by the research team.

What will you be asked to do?

Participation in this research involves three parts:

1. Completing a short online enrolment survey (approximately 5-10 minutes) to tell us a little about yourself and your availability to join a co-design workshop.
2. Filling in a brief pre-workshop form to help you prepare for our co-design workshop.
3. Attending one 60-minute online workshop (via Zoom videoconferencing).

The total time commitment for this study is expected to be no more than 2-hours.

You will be remunerated with a $100 online shopping voucher for your time. At the conclusion of the co-design workshop, you will be emailed a link to an electronic voucher. For those aged under 18 years, this link will be emailed to the address provided by a parent/guardian.

Further information about participating is available before completing the survey. Please ensure you read all the information before proceeding.

How to participate

If you would like to participate, please proceed with completing the online enrolment survey. Once you have done this, the research team will be in touch to organise your allocation to an online co-design workshop.

If  you would like more information about the project, please contact the research team by emailing [email protected]