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Childhood Studies Child Well-Being
by
Andrew Dawes
  • LAST REVIEWED: 01 July 2021
  • LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2012
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0012

Introduction

Well-being is a broad and contested construct with definitions that vary across disciplines, research studies, policy makers, cultural communities, and age groups. From an earlier emphasis on child poverty, survival, and health, the range of well-being domains included in definitions has expanded considerably. Despite contestation of the construct and its measurement, it is probably fair to state that the well-being of children (persons under eighteen years of age) refers to their current status as assessed across a number of domains appropriate to their stage of life. At least the following are relevant: survival, health (including mental health), safety and protection, education and development, social relations, and participation. Each of these contains a number of subareas. For example, disability may reside within health, although that is controversial. There is an increasing trend, in the industrialized nations at least, to move toward an approach to child well-being in which the focus is less on negative outcomes for children (e.g., delinquency; school dropout) than on positive attributes such as self-efficacy, civic participation, and prosocial behavior. Cultural communities, policy experts, and children themselves may not always share the same concerns when it comes to description and measurement. There is growing, although limited, realization of the importance of culturally valid conceptualization and measurement. Children and adolescents create their own cultural worlds and ideas about their well-being in accordance with their age, status, and local norms. Their perspectives are increasingly being sought in order to derive valid measures of their well-being.

The author would like to thank Ms. Inge Wessels for her assistance in compiling this bibliography.

General Overviews

Most of the literature in this field is concerned with indicators of child well-being and measurement. Less attention is paid to conceptualization. Camfield, et al. 2009 provides a systematic critique of the concept and its utilization, including the importance of drawing on local conceptualizations of well-being when designing instruments and conducting research. Weisner 1998 describes the manner in which cultural communities provide cultural pathways to desired developmental outcomes, including child well-being. Huston 2002 provides useful guidelines for linking of indicators of child well-being to children’s development and to their family environment. Children’s development and well-being is increasingly influenced by contexts beyond the family as they grow older. Earls and Carlson 2001 addresses this issue in a consideration of neighborhood influences. Most of the literature on child well-being derives from modern societies. Saith and Rekha 2010 provides one of the few critical examinations of the measurement of domains of child well-being in a developing country. Ennew 1999 is a seminal contribution to the use of indicators for tracking children’s rights.

  • Camfield, Laura, Natalia Streuli, and Martin Woodhead. “What’s the Use of ‘Well-Being’ in Contexts of Child Poverty? Approaches to Research, Monitoring and Children’s Participation.” International Journal of Children’s Rights 17 (2009): 65–109.

    DOI: 10.1163/157181808X357330Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe debates surrounding the conceptualization of child well-being and its measurement are covered in this comprehensive, well-reasoned essay. It is one of the few contributions to unpack the concept and interrogate the controversies surrounding definition and measurement. The authors stress the importance of assessing children’s own evaluations of their well-being.

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  • Earls, Felton, and Mary Carlson. “The Social Ecology of Child Health and Child Well-Being.” Annual Review of Public Health 22 (2001): 143–166.

    DOI: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.22.1.143Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe authors demonstrate the use of an ecological approach to well-being, arguing that we need to take account of the effects of contexts beyond the family. An excellent contribution to conceptualization of children’s contextual influences on well-being.

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  • Ennew, Judith. “Children’s Rights Indicators.” In Understanding Children’s Rights: Collected Papers at the Fourth International Interdisciplinary Course on Children’s Rights, Held at the University of Ghent, December 2000. Edited by Eugeen Verhellen, 197–216. Ghent, Belgium: Children’s Rights Centre, 1999.

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    NNNIn this important contribution to monitoring the realization of children’s rights, Ennew proposes that indicator systems include baselines, indicators that can provide disaggregation by age, gender, and disability, valid, reliable, regularly available data sources that permit tracking over time, and child-centered statistics.

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  • Huston, Althea C. “Reforms and Child Development.” Children and Welfare Reform 12 (2002): 59–77.

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    NNNHuston draws on child development to formulate a set of goals for child well-being, the supports needed to promote well-being, and a set of indicators for monitoring the status of children against each goal. Her approach identifies the need for a developmentally sensitive approach to child well-being and its measurement.

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  • Saith, Ashwani, and Wazir Rekha. “Towards Conceptualizing Child Wellbeing in India: Need for a Paradigm Shift.” Child Indicators Research 3 (2010): 385–408.

    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-010-9065-3Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe paper critiques approaches to the measurement of child well-being in India. It includes a review of some internationally advocated indicator systems used to monitor the situation of children, particularly in the developing world. Some, such as the Bristol approach, are criticized for having too strict a criterion for child deprivation.

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  • Weisner, Thomas S. “Human Development, Child Well-Being, and the Cultural Project of Development.” New Directions for Child Development 81 (1998): 69–85.

    DOI: 10.1002/cd.23219988006Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNFor Weissner, “Well-being is the ability to successfully, resiliently, and innovatively participate in the routines and activities deemed significant by a cultural community” (p. 75). His ecologically grounded approach clearly differs from most definitions of child well-being and calls attention to the need for locally informed measures of child outcomes.

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Data Sources

A key concern in the field is the definition and comparability of measures and indicators within and across countries. Significant strides toward harmonization have been made by UNICEF, particularly in regard to the measurement of survival, nutrition, immunization, child health, early childhood education, and economic well-being. Many of the data for these indicators are derived from government administrative systems and regular surveys. However, reporting on other domains—such as child protection, psychosocial well-being, and child participation—is much more challenging. Reports on indicators of child well-being are increasingly being generated by agencies around the world. A selected list of regional and global resources for data on child well-being is presented here. Global reports are useful for tracking the status of children across countries. Examples included are UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children reports (which cover a broad range of indicators of child well-being), UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Reports (which focus on educational well-being including early childhood development), and the World Health Organization (which provides data on maternal and child health indicators). Regional data are available from the developed nations from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and for the European Union in Bradshaw and Richardson 2009. A lack of data prevents comparability of African countries on more than a few indicators. Child well-being is advanced by the presence of appropriate government policies. Examples are provided of robust and reliable country-level indicator systems and data on child well-being. Most useful are regularly updated websites that include both national and subnational information. Examples include Kids Count in the United States, and the only similar system available on the African continent, Children Count, which reports the state of South African children. Bradshaw 2005, an edited collection on the United Kingdom, is an example of how statistics on a range of well-being domains may be tracked over time, together with narratives which examine possible reasons for these trends. Land, et al. 2001 provides an example of a robust, annually updated composite index of child well-being developed in the United States, but is also a useful model for others considering such an approach to annualized reporting.

Journals

Given the broadness of the well-being construct, articles on specific domains of child well-being such as child maltreatment, health, early childhood, or education, appear in journals devoted to these topics, of which there are a vast number. With the exception of the Journal of Children and Poverty (a key resource), the International Journal of Children’s Rights (relevant to the development of rights-based approaches to well-being), and Social Indicators Research (a key resource for articles on a wide range of topics relevant to child well-being, including poverty), journals that focus on the conceptualization and measurement of child well-being have been selected. Child Indicators Research is the official publication of the International Society for Child Indicators and seeks to advance the study of child well-being and its measurement. The journal covers a wide range of well-being domains and includes articles that use both quantitative and qualitative methods. For those seeking literature on the well-being of children in the welfare and child protection systems, Children and Youth Services Review is a key source.

History

The measurement of the health and educational status of children in industrialized nations has been evident since before World War II but has increased significantly since the 1960s, largely spurred by efforts to monitor the effects of social reform on the welfare of the young. Since 1989, the need to develop child well-being indicators for reporting to bodies such as the Committee on the Rights of the Child (which monitors the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, or UNCRC), has brought increased attention to the measurement of domains of child well-being, with both surveys and child-participatory methods. Ben Aryeh 2009 provides a broad international overview of this history, while Pollard and Lee 2003 provides a critical history of the conceptualization and use of child well-being and measurement in a more limited period (1974–1992). These contributions provide a useful overview of the range of domains covered under the term “well-being” during this period and encourage a move away from deficit indicators. Lippman 2007 is a country-specific account of the development of child well-being indicators in the United States. It highlights the important shift from deficit to positive indicators of well-being, while noting the challenges entailed in their measurement. Kamerman, et al. 2010 focuses on the changing role of welfare policy in support of vulnerable children’s well-being in modern societies.

  • Ben Aryeh, Asher. “The Child Indicators Movement: Past, Present, and Future.” Child Indicators Research 1 (2009): 3–16.

    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-007-9003-1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThis paper is a useful historical account of the rise of the child indicators movement and the forces that have shaped it, including “accountability-based public policy,” normative concepts of children’s rights, ecological orientations to child development, and the sociology of childhood.

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  • Kamerman, Sheila, Shelley Phipps, and Asher Ben-Aryeh, eds. From Child Welfare to Child Well-Being: An International Perspective on Knowledge in the Service of Policy Making. Berlin: Springer, 2010.

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    NNNThe volume provides a historical account of the shift from a deficit model of welfare provision to one that is development-oriented. Chapters include consideration of perspectives on welfare support and on the nature of child well-being, and the book has particular relevance for child welfare policy.

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  • Lippman, Laura. “Indicators and Indices of Child Well-Being: A Brief American History.” Social Indicators Research 83 (2007): 39–53.

    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-006-9058-2Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNA summary of trends in the field since the 1960s, with a particular focus on the United States, but including important moments in the international arena.

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  • Pollard, Elizabeth L., and Patrice D. Lee. “Child Well-Being: A Systematic Review of the Literature.” Social Indicators Research 61 (2003): 59–78.

    DOI: 10.1023/A:1021284215801Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe paper reviews literature since 1992 on the conceptualization of child well-being, the commonly used domains, indicators, measures, and research. Based on the search strategy, five commonly used domains were identified: physical, cognitive, psychological, social, and economic. The authors point to inconsistent definitions and lack of agreement on measurement.

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Measurement and Monitoring of Child Well-Being

Measurement issues far outweigh contributions on the conceptualization of child well-being. Measurement is dominated by quantitative approaches that draw on surveys and administrative data. However, as illustrated in this section, participatory methods are important for exploring children’s views of their own well-being and for informing the development of survey instruments that capture well-being from a child’s perspective. Significant impetus to developments in measurement has come from the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which required state parties to report on the status of children every five years. Also, the industrialized countries are increasingly using indicators of child well-being to inform public policy.

Edited Collections

There are no anthologies in this field in the proper sense of collections of seminal, previously published works. There are also no textbooks on the subject. There is, however, a growing number of edited collections. Recent and significant contributions that provide both conceptual and methodological contributions are included. They provide useful entry points to the development and measurement of child well-being, in particular Thornton 2001. All the volumes have relevance for policy making, with Brown 2008 providing examples from the United States, and Ben Aryeh and Goerge 2006 introducing methods of using indicators for advocacy purposes. Dawes, et al. 2007 provides the most explicitly rights-based approach to indicator construction for policy purposes in its South African contribution. Countering the historical tendency to measure deficits in child well-being, Ben-Aryeh, et al. 2001 and Moore and Lippman 2005 move the discussion toward the development of indicators that assess positive child outcomes and a wider range of domains of well-being. While a welcome development, there is much less data available for this purpose, and cultural variation in at least some aspects of this new generation of child well-being indicators is very likely. The collection Andersen, et al. 2010 is unusual in seeking to connect research from the field of childhood studies with that on child well-being indicators so as to enhance contributions to child policy in the context of the global financial crisis, and associated reforms in welfare and family policies.

  • Andersen, Sabine, Isabell Diehm, and Uwe Sander, eds. Children and the Good Life: New Challenges for Research on Children. Berlin: Springer, 2010.

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    NNNThe volume commences with an interrogation of the notion of childhood and what a “good life” for children might be in the 21st century. Sen’s Capabilities Approach is used to explore the capabilities children require to participate in a good life, and the responsibilities of those whose duty it is to ensure their well-being. Contributions include studies from countries in the global North and South.

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  • Ben-Aryeh, Asher, and Robert M. Goerge, eds. Indicators of Children’s Well-Being: Understanding their Role, Usage and Policy Influence. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006.

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    NNNThe volume explores the influence of indicators on policies and programming. Perhaps the two most useful contributions of the volume are its analysis of appropriate ways to present indicators to policy makers so that the information is taken up, and its discussion of evaluation designs for interventions to improve child well-being.

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  • Ben-Aryeh, Asher, H. N. Kaufman, B. A. Andrews, Robert M. Goerge, B. J. Lee, and J. Lawrence Aber, eds. Measuring and Monitoring Children’s Well-Being. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2001.

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    NNNThe authors argue for the need to move the discourse on child indicators from child survival to child well-being and from negative to positive indicators (e.g., civic engagement). This will be a challenge for countries with fewer data resources, and where survival remains a significant issue.

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  • Brown, Brett V., ed. Key Indicators of Child and Youth Well-Being: Completing the Picture. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2008.

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    NNNThe volume explores the use of child well-being indicators for policy purposes in the United States. Examples of national, state, and local-level usage are provided. The volume would be particularly useful for those looking for ideas on how to monitor local initiatives to improve the well-being of children.

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  • Dawes, Andrew, Rachel Bray, and Amelia van der Merwe, eds. Monitoring Child Well-Being: A South African Rights-Based Approach. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC, 2007.

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    NNNThis contribution provides a conceptual framework for the integration of child rights and well-being in monitoring systems. The framework guides the development of all the indicators presented in four broad domains of well-being. Comprehensive tables of indicators, measures and data sources are provided.

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  • Moore, Kristin A., and Laura Lippman, eds. What Do Children Need to Flourish? Conceptualizing and Measuring Indicators of Positive Development. New York: Springer, 2005.

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    NNNMuch of the indicator literature, and most efforts to measure child well-being, have focused on deficits. This volume moves the field forward in proposing the measurement of variables that are associated with positive outcomes for children. A challenge is to extend the availability of data for the measurement of these attributes.

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  • Thornton, Arland, ed. The Well-Being of Children and Families: Research and Data Needs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

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    NNNThis volume was produced by the Family and Child Well-Being Research Network of the National Institutes of Health. Particularly useful contributions are to be found in the discussions of the research and study designs that are required to generate improved knowledge for policy and intervention.

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Technical Contributions

This section includes a selection of more technical contributions that address the development of indicators, integration of rights and well-being indicators, child-centered statistics, the selection of appropriate data sources, and questions of measurement quality. It is centrally important for measures and indicators to be sufficiently robust for policy use, and those interested in indicator development and measurement will find these contributions to be of particular value. The ideas presented in Saporiti 1999 on the development of rights-based indicators of child well-being and child-centered statistics have provided the stimulus for several recent developments. They include the South African rights-based approach to monitoring children’s well-being developed by Bray and Dawes 2007. Noble, et al. 2007 applies this model specifically to children in poverty. Though published some time back, Moore 2007 is most useful in providing guidelines for selection of child indicators, while Goerge 1997 remains a key resource for those who wish to use administrative data to measure child well-being.

  • Bray, Rachel, and Andrew Dawes. “A Rights-Based Approach to Monitoring Child Well-Being.” In Monitoring Child Well-Being: A South African Rights-Based Approach. Edited by Andrew Dawes, Rachel Bray, and Amelia van der Merwe, 29–52. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC, 2007.

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    NNNA conceptual framework for monitoring child well-being within the context of international and national child rights law is presented. It links indicators of children’s well-being to the rights that should provide them with an enabling developmental environment. Indicators for duty-bearer monitoring are included.

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  • Goerge, Robert, M. “Potential and Problems in Developing Indicators on Child Well-Being from Administrative Data.” In The Indicators of Children’s Well-Being. Edited by Robert M. Hauser, Brett V. Brown, and William R. Prosser, 457–471. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.

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    NNNAdministrative data is that collected by governments and nongovernmental organizations in the regular course of their work. It is a potentially very useful, cost-efficient source of child well-being data. Goerge provides a thorough overview of the promise and limitations of administrative data for measuring and tracking child well-being.

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  • Moore, Kristin, A. “Criteria for Indicators of Child Well-Being.” In The Indicators of Children’s Well-Being. Edited by Robert M. Hauser, Brett V. Brown, and William R. Prosser, 36–44. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.

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    NNNMoore provides an excellent and concise introduction to requirements for the construction of sound social indicators of child well-being that can be used for tracking the status of children.

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  • Noble, Michael, Gemma Wright, and Lucie Cluver. “Conceptualising, Defining and Measuring Child Poverty in South Africa: An Argument for a Multi-Dimensional Approach.” In Monitoring Child Well-Being: A South African Rights-Based Approach. Edited by Andrew Dawes, Rachel Bray, and Amelia van der Merwe, 53–71. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC, 2007.

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    NNNNoble and colleagues develop a novel approach to the conceptualization and measurement of child poverty. They build a multidimensional model that includes absolute and relative poverty dimensions. It is an excellent example of a careful blend of conceptualization with proposals for measurement.

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  • Saporiti, Angelo. “Statistics in Childhood.” In Understanding Children’s Rights: Collected Papers at the Fourth International Interdisciplinary Course on Children’s Rights, Held at the University of Ghent, December 2000. Edited by Eugene Verhellen, 185–195. Ghent, Belgium: Children’s Rights Centre, 1999.

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    NNNSaporiti has made a significant contribution to the way we use survey data to provide information from the perspective of children. For example, we report the number of children living in workless households in order to provide estimates of the number of children affected by adult unemployment.

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Child Participation Methods

By far the majority of descriptions of child well-being are derived from quantitative data. One exception is illustrated in Biggeri, et al. 2006, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The field is severely limited by the exclusion of children as participants in the conceptualization and description of their well-being. Children also provide valuable insights on their status and the local conditions that either support or undermine it, without which interventions on their behalf may be of diminished effectiveness. Contributions in this section have been selected as outstanding examples of child participatory methodologies and their use. One of the most important stimuli to research in this tradition was Roger Hart’s research on children’s views on their neighborhoods and cities (Hart 1997), while Camfield, et al. 2009, and Crivello, et al. 2009 illustrate the usefulness of participatory methods in extracting children’s views of their well-being and threats to their development in developing countries. Excellent guides to methods of accessing children’s views on their well-being and their circumstances include Boyden and Ennew 1997, and more recently, Save the Children UK 2004.

  • Biggeri, Mario, Renato Libanora, Stefano Mariani and Leonardo Menchini. “Children Conceptualizing their Capabilities: Results of a Survey Conducted during the First World Congress on Child Labour.” Journal of Human Development 7.1 (2006): 59–83.

    DOI: 10.1080/14649880500501179Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNNot all child participatory research is qualitative in nature. Underpinned by Amartya Sen’s capability approach to development, this paper provides an interesting example of a blend of participatory and quantitative research methods to explore child workers’ conceptualizations of the capabilities they require in the period of eleven to seventeen years of age.

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  • Boyden, Jo, and Judith Ennew, eds. Children in Focus: A Manual for Participatory Research with Children. Stockholm: Save the Children Sweden, 1997.

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    NNNThis manual, written by two of the leading experts in child participatory methodology, was one of the first research manuals to be published. It remains an excellent resource, with illustrations of many techniques from the author’s research, conducted principally with children made vulnerable by poverty, child labor, and other conditions.

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  • Camfield, Laura, Gina Crivello, and Martin Woodhead. “Wellbeing Research in Developing Countries: Reviewing the Role of Qualitative Methods.” Social Indicators Research 90 (2009): 5–31.

    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-008-9310-zSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe authors provide a review of qualitative research methods to explore well-being among children and adults in developing countries. Drawing on their research in the Young Lives study, they provide insights into both the benefits and challenges of these methods. An excellent resource for those embarking on such research.

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  • Crivello, Gina, Laura Camfield, and Martin Woodhead. “How Can Children Tell Us about Their Wellbeing? Exploring the Potential of Participatory Research Approaches within Young Lives.” Social Indicators Research 90 (2009): 51–72.

    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-008-9312-xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNYoung Lives provides the opportunity for the use of qualitative methods over time with the same children at different points in their development. The paper provides a discussion of the innovative and locally sensitive “well-being exercise” used to identify the elements of a good or bad life for children.

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  • Hart, Roger. Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. London: Earthscan, 1997.

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    NNNHart’s work is seminal. While the focus is on the involvement of children in community development and environmental care, the volume provides illustrations of research techniques that can be used to explore a range of issues affecting children. They include Hart’s well-known “Ladder of Participation” technique.

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  • Save the Children UK. Children and Participation: Research, Monitoring and Evaluation with Children and Young People. London: Save the Children UK, 2004.

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    NNNThis guide to participatory research with children provides an overview of all elements of this methodology, including ethical issues and actual techniques used by leading researchers and practitioners. A user-friendly introduction to conducting research of this genre that will be of value to both academics and program staff.

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Composite Indices of Child Well-Being

Composite indicators are useful shorthand descriptions of complex situations. One figure based on an interrelated set of indicators that may be drawn from several domains is provided to describe a population or society. An example is the Human Development Index, which is composed of measures of longevity, income per capita, and level of education. As Ben-Aryeh 2008 has noted, in recent years several composite indices of child well-being have been established and other initiatives are underway, as illustrated in a special edition of the Journal of Child Indicators Research (Moore, et al. 2008). Composite indices are not without problems; for example, they may mask variations in the trends of the individual indicators that make up the index. Nevertheless, if sufficiently reliable, they provide a resource for policy makers and citizens who may use an index for advocacy purposes. This section provides illustrative examples of indices constructed in different parts of the world. The index developed for the European Union in Bradshaw and Richardson 2009 is an example of a transnational system, as is United Nations Children’s Fund 2007, produced for the wealthy nations. Save the Children UK 2004, a rights-oriented approach, provides the simplest of these systems, using only three indicators in an effort to facilitate reporting on core aspects of deficit-oriented child well-being across the world. The Bristol Child Deprivation Index, produced for the Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities, is a policy tool which identifies children living in highly vulnerable circumstances in regions characterized by extensive poverty. Also directed to the identification of risks to the well-being of children in poverty is the set of family care indicators developed by Hamadani, et al. 2010.

Mapping Child Well-Being at Small-Area Level

A recent advance in the field is evident in using indicators to map aspects of child well-being at small geographic levels, enabling identification of areas of a region or local district within which children are doing well or are subject to deprivation. This section cites examples from three countries in which administrative and other regularly collected data are used to populate indices at different geographic levels: at the county level in North Carolina (Hur and Testerman 2010), at the municipal level in South Africa (Barnes, et al. 2009), and at the county level in England, where Bradshaw, et al. 2008 mapped child well-being in areas consisting of 1,500 people on average.

  • Barnes, Helen, Michael Noble, Gemma Wright, and Andrew Dawes. “A Geographical Profile of Child Deprivation in South Africa.” Child Indicators Research 2 (2009): 121–199.

    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-008-9026-2Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNDrawing on techniques developed in the United Kingdom, this paper reports the first Index of Child Deprivation for South Africa, which is used to map child deprivation at the municipality level. This is the only African example of its kind and shows how an index can be constructed from census data.

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  • Bradshaw, Jonathan, M. Noble, K. Bloor, M. Huby, D. McLennan, D. Rhodes, I. Sinclair, and K. Wilkinson. “A Child Well-Being Index at Small Area Level in England.” Child Indicators Research 2 (2008): 201–219.

    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-008-9022-6Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNSignificant progress has been made in producing indices of multiple deprivation at the small-area level for the United Kingdom. This paper describes the first index for children in England using mainly administrative data. The paper is an excellent technical guide for those wishing to design similar indices in other countries.

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  • Hur, Yongbeon, and Robin Testerman. “An Index of Child Well-Being at a Local Level in the U.S.: The Case of North Carolina Counties.” Child Indicators Research (2010).

    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-010-9087-xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    NNNThe paper provides a good example of the use of mainly administrative data to map child well-being in four domains (health, safety, education, and economic well-being). It is a very useful source of information on the technical aspects of composite indicator construction.

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