Poster #219 - Linking Concepts, Measurements and Policies in the Field of Child and Youth Well-Being

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social Policy

Integrative Statement

Our project represents a European infrastructure with the aim to prepare the first Europe wide cohort survey on child and youth well-being. The longitudinal study seeks to start with two age cohorts (0-1 years and 7 years) over the course of 25 years. The goal is to involve all 28 member states of the European Union in order to receive internationally comparable data as well as ideas about the state of child and youth well-being beyond borders. One of the project’s central tasks is to define the most crucial domains that influence child and youth well-being and their measurement. Thereby, we cannot rely on existing approaches only, but need to reflect recent developments influencing Europe’s societies. Our poster focuses on the interplay between policies, well-being concepts and measurement approaches and is structured in three steps.
In a first step, we provide a comprehensive review of existing approaches and conduct semi structured interviews with experts coming from various disciplines in order to detect any child and youth well-being domains that have not been sufficiently addressed in existing studies. In a second step, we reconsider measurement concepts of these well-being domains with respect to their ability to capture the information needed for most effective policies. Our results indicate the need for developing new measurement instruments in certain domains that have either recently become more relevant or have been measured with no suitable standards for revealing all crucial information (e.g. to only consider the objective dimension, not the subjective one). In a third step, it is necessary to design appropriate survey instruments according to different cohorts. This refers to the relevance of certain topics as well as the person who can provide information on our target group (the child or young person himself/herself, parents, teachers, etc.). Thus, the results of a Delphi study among researchers and child and youth survey representants from 16 European institutes will point out the most important well-being domains to be considered for child and youth well-being across Europe as well as their preferred measurement approaches. By using this three step approach, we seek to link well-being concepts, measurement concepts and policies in order to contribute to a longterm improvement of child and yout well-being monitoring across Europe.
Based on this work, we will develop a set of questionnaires for different cohorts. The poster presents the groundwork for setting up an international longitudinal study measuring child and youth well-being, comprising the preparation of survey methods as well as the study’s infrastructure. Numerous challenges that evolved in this process will be presented and discussed.

Authors

• Britta Busse, University of Bremen
  Non-Presenting Author

• Thalia Hirsch, University of Bremen
  Presenting Author