How to Join - Aged 12-15
Aged 12-15? You can join Generation Scotland too! Learn how you can take part and what you'd be asked to do here.
Generation Scotland is the largest family health study in the country, with over 30,000 volunteers. It has been running since 2006 but for the first time ever young people over the age of 12 living in Scotland can join. This means we can learn more about health and well-being of young people like you.
We would like to invite you to join Generation Scotland which has helped to discover important information about many health conditions including cancer, heart disease, stroke, Covid-19, mental health and many more.
Imagine how much we could learn about the health of young people with your help?
You can choose to join as an individual or you can invite your family to join too. As a family health study, we are particularly interested in learning about genetics and the environment, and why some health conditions affect some family members but not others. Understanding this will help researchers to discover new ways to help people who are ill or stop them becoming ill in the first place.
Taking part is all online. If you are aged 12 to 15 your parent or guardian will need to agree that you can join the study.
- Read about our study
- Consent to taking part
- Provide parent/guardian contact details for approval to join
- Answer the short online questionnaire
- Once your parent/guardian agrees, you can complete the joining process by returning your freepost saliva sample - pop it in your nearest post box
Alternatively, your parent or guardian can send you an invite to join once they've signed up themselves.
How much you want to be involved from then on is totally up to you. From time to time you will be asked to complete additional questionnaires or take part in new studies. When you receive an invitation you can choose which ones you want to do, if any.
That is all that it takes to become a volunteer (around 30 minutes) and make a massive difference to how we study and understand health in Scotland. It is a free way to give something back and help make Scotland healthier tomorrow.
If you would like more information, you can visit the website on https://www.gen.scot or if you have suggestions on how we can improve what we do, we would love to hear from you. In fact it is thanks to young people’s thoughts and ideas that we have managed to change our whole sign up process to make it better for other young people to join… so thank you for being awesome!!!
You can also drop us an email genscot@ed.ac.uk, or call us on 0131 651 8718.