Once all the data came in I was able to identify themes in the numbers that I wanted to take a closer look at understand the reasoning behind: the nearly 100,000 increase in students accessing mental health support served as an opening headline but I was keen to examine trends within specific universities.
I compiled a 'top five' and a 'bottom five' in terms of proportion of students accessing services, five year increase in demand, and five year budget increases. From there I reached out to each of these universities asking them if they would put forward a representative to be interviewed about what they feel their services do well, how they have adapted as a result of the pandemic and, if applicable, responding to comments raised by students.
The majority of my interviews were conducted over Zoom. This was an audio compromise I was willing to make given a) the number of interviewees I had, and b) the distance I would have had to travel to visit each university.
For most recordings I found the sound was perfectly acceptable however I there was a key-quote from one of the interviews where the sound dipped as they said the word 'but' which meant the sound sort of merged into one and felt a little awkward. I got around this by splicing in a different clip of them saying 'but' from later on in the interview and, I think, it works well - but I'll let the listeners be the judge of that.
As part of the multimedia treatment of the project I produced some videos in Headliner to highlight key quotes that I could then share on social media.
Interviews with students / academics in and around Bournemouth were primarily done in person and I don't think the sound quality between in-person interviews and remote interviews is overly noticeable throughout the documentary. There is a natural difference in quality and clarity but I don't the differenced comes across as disjointed.
Lots of universities were not willing to provide either a formal interview or a written statement but, for those that did, I made sure to include elements in response to any specific comment being made about their services: this included in the documentary, on the website, or on social media.
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