Professor Peter Lynn, Professor of Survey Methodolgy at ISER, and Dr Gundi Knies, Research Fellow, will be working with Manchester Metropolitan University researchers on the design of a survey for the first Europe-wide project to track the well-being of children as they grow up.
The European Cohort Development Project (ECDP) will establish the design of a European survey called EuroCohort for children and young people from birth until the age of 25 and aims to provide data to aid policy makers across Europe to make better decisions to secure their wellbeing.
The project, funded by the European Commission, will bring much needed attention to the reality that policy makers are unable to draw upon the type of data that is needed to address complex social problems which often have a negative impact on child and adolescent well-being. According to the OECD publication ‘How’s Life’ (2015) there is a need for “longitudinal and purpose-built surveys of child well-being” in order to fully understand how it is that a variety of policies influence different groups of children at different points in their lives. Without such data policies will be ill informed and less likely to be able to make a real difference.
This new project is set to work out the requirements for a survey that will provide the evidence base to comprehensively inform progress on childhood health and well-being.
Once in operation, the survey will gather large amounts of data on measures of health and wellbeing, such as stress at school and happiness in the home. A comparison across European countries will strengthen the understanding of how context and policy influence such measures.
Professor Peter Lynn will chair the Survey Group which collates the project’s development activities in a number of the project’s areas related to survey design, survey management and co-ordination processes. The ISER team are additionally responsible for Work Packages on sample design, non-response, and data collection modes and will contribute to work on questionnaire content, questionnaire translation, data management, and user support.
Professor Lynn said:
“We are delighted to have been asked to contribute ISER’s expertise in longitudinal survey design and implementation to this important and ground-breaking project. The EuroCohort adds to ISER’s substantial portfolio of cross-national survey research and has the potential for huge impact.”
Professor Gary Pollock, Head of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University and lead researcher said: “The European Cohort Development project is a first as it is building towards a pan-European, longitudinal survey of child health and wellbeing.
“The aim is to arrive at a research framework that is scientifically robust enough for policymakers to take forward.”
The next year and a half of the project is focussed on setting up the survey. The project held its initial meeting in January, and now partners from 12 European countries will begin work to develop the research design and the data collection instruments. Due to the relevance of the future survey’s findings to national governments and institutions, the project team is involving them from the start.
Dominic Richardson from UNICEF said: “The need for robust evidence on what determines the trajectories of development and child wellbeing across the life course cannot be understated. A Europe-wide survey fills an important gap in knowledge, and strengthens the ability of policy makers in different countries and contexts to learn and share good practice for child development. The ECDP is a vital next step in improving child policy, and through this the living standards of all children in Europe.”
The project includes partner universities from Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and The Netherlands. Representatives from UNICEF are also closely involved with the project and are keen to support the initiative to develop a Europe wide cohort survey.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 777449.