As part of the ConveRSE project, I’ve been using Mentimeter to collect data from attendees of my “Let’s Talk About Mental Health” talk.
Most of this data was collected at RSECon25 and during a recent visit to the Research Engineering Group at the Alan Turing Institute in London (you can read more about that in my recent blog post on the SSI website).
The Questions
At the end of each talk, I switch over to Mentimeter - an interactive tool that allows the audience to use their phones or laptops to respond anonymously to questions from the presenter.
I ask the audience two questions:
- What are the biggest challenges/barriers to your mental health in the workplace?
- Do you have any tips or advice for managing your mental health, or any good examples of things people have done to support the wellbeing of their teams?
The first question helps us understand the most common issues, which tells us where we should focus the efforts of the ConveRSE project. The second question is potentially more interesting, if harder to answer. I was hoping to collect some good tips and advice - for individuals and for leaders - that we can feed back into future conversations, talks and blog posts.
The Data
So, was that the case? Well, let’s take a look at the data.
Participation and Responses
First, some context:
- 108 participants logged on to Mentimeter across multiple talks.
- Each question received responses from around 87% of the participants.
- Participants can submit multiple responses to each question. We got 128 responses to Question 1 and 197 responses to Question 2.
Analysis
So far, we have only been able to do basic analysis on the data. The responses were free text, so the data is qualitative. To do this initial review of the data, I have taken two approaches:
- Using Power BI, I created a Word Cloud for each question. This is essentially a count of how many times each word was used. (This is how the visual used in the thumbnail of this blog post was created.)
- I have attempted to categorise the submissions and amalgamate them, as described below.
Each response was assigned a number of categories. For example:
- Amalgamating different spellings (“impostor syndrome” and “imposter syndrome”).
- Combining similar advice: (lots of people mentioned “fresh air”, “nature”, “touching grass” or “get outside”).
- Separating multiple responses. For example, one response was: “Yoga, Work from home more often, Team lunch on pay day, No work on weekends”, which was assigned four categories.
There is more work to be done, but this initial processing has allowed us to take a look at common responses to each question.
Question 1
Question 1 was “What are the biggest challenges/barriers to mental health in the workplace?” The graph below shows the number of times each of the most common issues was mentioned.
The three most reported issues were: Workload (22 responses), Context Switching (13) and Impostor Syndrome (11). These are common issues that have cropped up in so many conversations over the last few months. You could argue that these are just part of everyday life for RSEs, but there must also be more that we can do to mitigate these issues or support people who are struggling with them.
The next two most reported issues were Workplace Culture (9) and Management/Leadership (7). This just goes to show how important leaders and line managers are, both in supporting individuals and in supporting their teams.
This data seems to support my current conclusions from my Fellowship so far:
- Self-care is important, and we need to provide people with the information, support and tools they need to look after themselves.
- We need to give leaders and line managers the tools they need to manage not just the projects and workload of their teams, but the morale and wellbeing too.
Question 2
Question 2 was “Do you have any tips or advice for managing mental health or any good examples of things people have done to support the morale of their teams?”. The graph below shows the number of times each suggestion was made.
The top three suggestions were Exercise (25), Socialising - both with colleagues and outside of work (24) and Setting Boundaries (21). Touching Grass (i.e. getting out into nature) was another popular one, along with hobbies, mindfulness and making sure to take breaks and holidays.
Setting Boundaries is anything that involves establishing a clear separation between work and home, such as breaking up the day when working from home and protecting personal time. Similarly, there is “No Notifications” (8), which could mean not having work emails on your phone or having designated quiet times where you focus on work without interruptions (Incidentally, I have recently written a blog post about both of these things).
There were also a few interesting insights that came out of the data, even though they weren’t the top-scoring categories. For example, a few of the suggestions were specifically to find hobbies “that do not look like work”. I’m guilty of this; a lot of my hobbies involve sitting in the same room, at the same desk, using the same computer and staring at the same screen that I’ve just been using all day for work!
Final Thoughts
I think that giving these talks in person has been a very useful experience. The conversations I’ve had continue to inform the ConveRSE project, and the Mentimeter data has been a good source of information about common issues in the community.
I acknowledge that there is a balance to be struck here. It’s good to know what the most common problems are, as by focusing on them, we can make the biggest impact on the community as a whole. But we also don’t want to ignore the less common issues, as we don’t want to neglect or marginalise anyone.
However, this experience has reaffirmed my belief that we make a difference by providing leaders with tools to support their teams and providing individuals with the tools they need to look after themselves.
If you’d like me to give my “Let’s Talk About Mental Health” talk at your institution, please get in touch (the SSI will cover travel, accommodation, etc. until the end of March 2026).
Thanks for reading.
Take care of yourselves.
