Child Indicators Research 

About: Child Indicators Research is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Early childhood education & Psychology. It has an ISSN identifier of 1874-897X. Over the lifetime, 1043 publications have been published receiving 16112 citations.

The Child Indicators Movement: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract: The effort to measure and monitor children’s well-being and the use of child well-being indicators is not new. However, recent years have brought new and growing attention to the field, and some argue, the revival of the children’s social indicators movement. Much of this new activity can be traced back to the 1960s social indicators movement and be accounted for by UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children annual report, as well as other international and national initiatives and projects. The United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, through its global ratification and its reporting and monitoring mechanism, has also played a major role in increasing interest in the field. This paper presents the history and development of the field, identifies current trends, and predicts where the field is headed.

An Index of Child Well-Being in Europe

Abstract: This is a comparison of child well-being in the 27 countries of the European Union and Norway and Iceland. It is based on 43 indicators forming 19 components derived from administrative and survey data around 2006. It covers seven domains: health, subjective well-being, personal relationships, material resources, education, behaviour and risks, housing and the environment. Comparisons are made of countries performance on each of the domains and components. Overall child well-being is highest in the Netherlands which is also the only country to perform in the top third of countries across all domains. Child well-being is worst in the former Eastern bloc countries with the exception of Slovenia. Lithuania performs in the bottom third on all domains. The United Kingdom does notably badly given its level of national wealth. The index is subjected to sensitivity analysis and analysis is undertaken to explain variations in child well-being. We find that there are positive associations between child well-being and spending on family benefits and services and GDP per capita, a negative association with inequality and no association with the prevalence of ‘broken’ families.

Psychometric Validation of the Revised Family Affluence Scale: a Latent Variable Approach

Abstract: The aim was to develop and test a brief revised version of the family affluence scale. A total of 7120 students from Denmark, Greenland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Scotland and Slovakia reported on a list of 16 potential indicators of affluence. Responses were subject to item screening and test of dimensionality. Bifactor analysis revealed a strong general factor of affluence in all countries, but with additional specific factors in all countries. The specific factors mainly reflected overlapping item content. Item screening was conducted to eliminate items with low discrimination and local dependence, reducing the number of items from sixteen to six: Number of computers, number of cars, own bedroom, holidays abroad, dishwasher, and bathroom. The six-item version was estimated with Samejima’s graded response model, and tested for differential item functioning by country. Three of the six items were invariant across countries, thus anchoring the scale to a common metric across countries. The six-item scale correlated with parental reported income groups in six out of eight countries. Findings support a revision to six items in the family affluence scale.

Subjective Social Indicators and Child and Adolescent Well-being

Abstract: This paper reflects on the opportunity to take steps in the direction of proposing international systems of subjective social indicators of children’s and adolescents’ well-being. In order to contextualize such a reflection, a brief summary of the historical and epistemological foundations of the concept of social indicators, and of some of the controversies associated with the research results during the first decades of its existence, is made. Such foundations, research results and consequent debates have mostly been developed considering only adult populations, but they are reviewed here to explore research goals in relation to children’s and adolescents’ well-being and to link these goals to political action and decision making and the evaluation of its impact. The lack of internationaly comparable subjective data on children’s and adolescents’ well-being at the macro level may be related, among other things, to the lack of political importance given to the younger population’s point of view and to the lack of consistent or convincing research at a micro-level indicating what data-collection instruments are appropriate for making cross-national or cross-cultural comparisons. However, at present, research on children’s and adolescents’ own points of view about their living conditions—although still in its early stages and very heterogeneous—is already showing rapid advances and even provocative and unexpected results, of which a few examples are given. Tested instruments are already available, but systematic data collection is still scarce, and comparable data to be used for international comparisons is infrequent. Systematic data collection of children’s and adolescents’ perceptions, evaluations and aspirations that can be used as subjective social indicators requires political will, associated with the conviction that such data can be useful for decision-making and for evaluating social change. An increasing international interest in children’s rights to social participation seems to be an opportunity to promote links with research on childrens’ and adolescents’ well-being, both objective and subjective. Having an overall panorama of all these elements may be helpful to guide debates on what research is still needed and on what are the major challenges to be faced when offering research data to policy makers and to the public opinion.

When Children are Asked About Their Well-being: Towards a Framework for Guiding Policy

Abstract: Research which focuses on children’s perspectives of their well-being complements and challenges existing research and policy on children. The study reported on here explored children’s views of what constitutes well-being, what meaning children and young people ascribe to the concept and whether distinct dimensions or characteristics of well-being can be identified. The project was initiated by the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People as a basis for developing an authoritative child-informed framework for monitoring of well-being of children in New South Wales, Australia. In this paper, we outline the rationale for and details of qualitative research methods employed in the project, along with details of the major findings from the research. These include, the overarching importance of relationships with others and, more specifically, the importance of agency and control in the various domains identified as relevant to their wellbeing, the importance of safety and security and the way these factors contribute to sense of self. More minor but significant domains identified were: dealing with adversity, material and economic resources, physical environments, physical health and social and moral responsibility. The significance of the findings for policy development and the particular challenge of developing indicators from the research are discussed.