Measuring Mental Health Among Adolescents and Young People at the Population Level (MMAPP) Toolkit
The Measuring Mental Health among Adolescents and Young People at the Population Level (MMAPP) initiative, initiated in 2018 and developed by UNICEF and partners, aims to address the critical lack of reliable data and tools for assessing adolescent and youth mental health at the population level. By improving the availability, reliability, and validity of such measures, MMAPP equips stakeholders to make informed decisions across critical areas of programmes, policy, and advocacy to transform youth mental health locally and globally.
The MMAPP toolkit, developed as part of the initiative, includes the MMAPP questionnaire to measure adolescents’ and young people’s mental health, mental health indicators for standardized reporting of population-level prevalence rates, a set of operational guidelines and protocols to support measure adaptation and data collection, and associated implementation resources and templates. Together, these tools support cultural adaptation, validation, and interpretation to generate contextually appropriate, reliable data on adolescents’ and young people’s mental health needs. This adaptability is a core feature of the toolkit. By accounting for local variation in culture, language, and context, this toolkit aims to ensure the quality, reliability, and relevance of data collection, interpretation, and use of data generated from MMAPP.
Who can use the MMAPP Questionnaire and toolkit?
- Researchers interested in using data collected through the MMAPP questionnaire to better understand the state of adolescent and youth mental health
- Household survey experts interested in using MMAPP to generate population-based estimates
- Programme managers and field staff across any sector (including but not limited to education, health, child protection, social services, and climate justice) who plan, implement, and/or evaluate programmes
- Youth leaders, advocates, or young professionals who are interested in participatory data collection on mental health, and how to make data contextually relevant in the settings in which they live and work
- Policy makers, government agencies and service providers that collect mental health data for population and programme monitoring, policy and service design, and other practical purposes.
Using the MMAPP toolkit
The MMAPP questionnaire and toolkit are an open-access tool freely available under a CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license. Individuals or organizations interested in using MMAPP for generating data on adolescent and youth mental health outcomes should use this toolkit from the initial planning through every stage of the process, including data analysis and reporting. Used in this way, the guidance can support consistent and comparable data collection and use across every stage of the data cycle and improve data-driven action for adolescent and youth mental health.
What is included in the toolkit?
The toolkit includes:
- Overview of the MMAPP initiative
- MMAPP Domains, Indicators, and Questionnaire Development
- The MMAPP Questionnaire
- Processes and Considerations of Implementing the MMAPP Questionnaire
- MMAPP Questionnaire Scoring, Cut-offs, Indicators, and Reporting Considerations
- The MMAPP Initiative, Next Steps
Additionally, there are several Annexes that include supplementary information and implementation tools.
