A simple questionnaire based on emoticons, entitled "How I Feel About My School" is now available to download for free. Designed by experts at the University of Exeter Medical School, the questionnaire uses emoticon-style faces from happy to sad to rate how the children feel in the classroom and in the playground.

The questionnaire is designed to aid teachers and others to communicate with children on complex emotions using simple emoticons, pertaining what they feel in certain situations, including on the way to school. It was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula, according to Science Daily.

Professor Tamsin Ford, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Exeter Medical School, led the design, by collecting feedback from the children on which style of questionnaire they could relate to the most. She found out that the emoticon-style faces were the most relative to children. She said, "When we're carrying out research in schools, it can be really difficult to meaningfully assess how the young children are feeling. We couldn't find anything that could provide what we needed, so we decided to create something instead."

The design was also inspired by a previous study led by Professor Ford, entitled "Supporting Teachers and Children in Schools", published in BioMed Central. Professor Ford said that the study was meant to represent a simple and possible approach for children of all ages to open up to how they are feeling in relation to different areas of schooling.

More than 2,000 children in Devon have completed the questionnaire using the emoticons scale, proving that it is a very useful tool to measure their well-being and happiness. The questionnaire has also been used as a subject in the Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry journal. "I hope schools will take advantage of this free resource to initiate conversations with children in talking about their feelings and to give them a voice, particularly around key decisions that may affect them," said Professor Ford.