ArticlePDF Available

Measuring Child Well-Being: An Inventory of Key Indicators, Domains and Indicator Selection Criteria to Support the Development of a National Set of Child Well-Being Indicators

  • January 2005
Authors:
Anne-Marie Brooks
Anne-Marie Brooks
Sinéad Hanafin at Trinity College Dublin
Sinéad Hanafin
Download full-text PDFDownload full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation
Inventory of Child Well_Being_Indicato
rs.pdf
Content uploaded by Sinéad Hanafin
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sinéad Hanafin on Aug 31, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Inventory of Child Well_Being_Indicato
rs.pdf
Content uploaded by Sinéad Hanafin
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sinéad Hanafin on Aug 31, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
... ■ A background review of indicator sets in use elsewhere and the compilation of an inventory of key indicators, domains and indicator selection criteria (Brooks and Hanafin, 2005); ■ A feasibility study of the availability of national statistics to construct the indicators identified in the previous step (Fitzgerald, 2004); ■ A study on Children's Understandings of Well-Being (NicGabhainn and Sixsmith 2005); and ■ A consensus process referred to as a Delphi technique, where members of a panel of expertise agreed a working list of indicators for use in the Irish context (Hanafin and Brooks, 2005). ...
... ■ A background review of indicator sets in use elsewhere and the compilation of an inventory of key indicators, domains and indicator selection criteria (Brooks and Hanafin, 2005); ■ A feasibility study of the availability of national statistics to construct the indicators identified in the previous step (Fitzgerald, 2004); ■ A study on Children's Understandings of Well-Being (NicGabhainn and Sixsmith 2005); and ■ A consensus process referred to as a Delphi technique, where members of a panel of expertise agreed a working list of indicators for use in the Irish context (Hanafin and Brooks, 2005). ...
... ranged from using volunteers (Snyder-Halpern, 2002) to the adoption of very formal and strict criteria around, for example, authorship (Rogers and Lopez, 2002) or membership of a particular group (Campbell et al., 2000). In this Study, a number of avenues were explored for identifying members of the panel of expertise (Hanafin and Brooks, 2005) and on balance, it was decided to use the National Children's Office 'Research Development Advisory Group' (N = 18 researchers, policymakers and service providers) to form the basis for the panel. ...
View
... A variety of initiatives can be seen across jurisdictions and among non-governmental think tanks (e.g., NEF, 2011;NICE, 2009;OECD, 2011) In Ireland, the development of a dedicated Wellbeing strand was a major component of significant reforms to junior cycle education (Grades 7-9), alongside broader changes which were collectively aimed at encouraging a more holistic and less exam-driven educational experience (DES, 2015;NCCA, 2017). These reforms were built on earlier consultation and advocacy, fuelled by a growing emphasis on monitoring various indicators of wellbeing both in school settings and in broader society (Brooks & Hanafin, 2005;DCYA, 2014;NESC, 2009). However, it should be recognised that schools themselves -in their structures, curricula and practices -can add to young people's stress. ...
Wellbeing in Personal Development: Lessons from National School-Based Programmes in Ireland and South Korea
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Jan 2022
This chapter describes two programmes, with signifcant similarities and differences, that have been available in Ireland since 1974 (Transition Year; TY) and South Korea since 2013 (Free Year Programme; FYP). TY takes place over one full year as an integrated part of mainstream secondary education. TY students engage in developmental activities, vocational work experience, and increased interaction with the adult world. These experiences are intended to facilitate enhanced maturity and broadened horizons, supporting young people in becoming fulflled citizens. Although TY is well-established within Ireland, it is an unusual innovation internationally. However, 2013 saw the introduction of FYP, which was partially informed by TY. South Korean policy-makers recognised concern about student wellbeing and stress in a high-stakes academic environment, and challenges relating to students’ readiness for the working world. FYP is a response to those concerns. This chapter offers an overview and comparisons between the two programmes. We argue that both are founded on a eudaimonic view of wellbeing in education, aiming for more holistic and rounded student development. Significantly, both programmes emphasise community engagement and interpersonal development, alongside personal development and self-directed learning. The challenges and practices identifed offer lessons for educators in Ireland, South Korea, and other jurisdictions.
View
... Bargain and Donni (2007) emphasize the theory of targeting children to influence their productivity and well-being, while Gregg et al. (2005) investigate the effects of mothers' decisions of returning to work on child development. The issues of measurement, decomposition of well-being and the underlying indicators are investigated by Brooks and Hanafin (2005). Kamerman et al. (2003) discuss social policies, family types and child outcomes. ...
Measurement and Analysis of Multidimensional Well-Being in Rwanda
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Apr 2019
The well-being of families and their children is given high priority in development goals. Children’s well-being in Africa is important since the growing number of children is the greatest resource of this continent. Rwanda was one of the first countries that ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The country, despite its very low GDP per capita, also has one of the best child well-being indicators in Africa. In the recent past the country has also had two important achievements: protection of children by establishing the National Commission for Children and launching a Strategy for National Child Care Reform. The measures aim to protect children’s rights and integrate children into families that are supported to provide needed care to them. These achievements are largely the result of strong laws and policies many of which have been developed with support from UNICEF. Investments in children’s well-being will help in addressing many persistent difficulties that society may have to face in the future. What happens during the early years is of crucial importance for every child’s development. This period offers great opportunities, but children are also vulnerable to negative influences. The objective of this research is to estimate multidimensional well-being of children and their families in Rwanda. The aim is to compute an overall well-being index decomposed into its underlying main components. The households are ranked by the level of well-being and by various household and community characteristics. The results shed light on the state and changes in the well-being of children and their families in Rwanda indicating which provinces and districts offer relatively better conditions for them. This can serve as a model for public policies aimed at improving general well-being in the country.
View
... De Leeuw et al. [90] presented a latent time-budget model, but this was based on data gathered from random spot observations rather than diaries and does not appear to have been utilised greatly since its publication nearly 25 years ago. Notwithstanding these limitations, the present study reflects contemporary perspectives in adolescent health policy and research that favour strength-based and population health approaches in understanding the lives of young people and that prioritise their self-report of health and well-being [45,[93][94][95]. We successfully identified distinct profiles of adolescent time-use and found some differences in HRQoL across profiles. ...
A person-centred analysis of the time-use, daily activities and health-related quality of life of Irish school-going late adolescents
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2014
Purpose: The health, well-being and quality of life of the world's 1.2 billion adolescents are global priorities. A focus on their patterns or profiles of time-use and how these relate to health-related quality of life (HRQoL) may help to enhance their well-being and address the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases in adulthood. This study sought to establish whether distinct profiles of adolescent 24-h time-use exist and to examine the relationship of any identified profiles to self-reported HRQoL. Method: This cross-sectional study gathered data from a random sample of 731 adolescents (response rate 52%) from 28 schools (response rate 76%) across Cork city and county. A person-centred approach, latent profile analysis, was used to examine adolescent 24-h time-use and relate the identified profiles to HRQoL. Results: Three male profiles emerged, namely productive, high leisure and all-rounder. Two female profiles, higher study/lower leisure and moderate study/higher leisure, were identified. The quantitative and qualitative differences in male and female profiles support the gendered nature of adolescent time-use. No unifying trends emerged in the analysis of probable responses in the HRQoL domains across profiles. Females in the moderate study/higher leisure group were twice as likely to have above-average global HRQoL. Conclusion: Distinct time-use profiles can be identified amongst adolescents, but their relationship with HRQoL is complex. Rich mixed-method research is required to illuminate our understanding of how quantities and qualities of time-use shape lifestyle patterns and how these can enhance the HRQoL of adolescents in the twenty-first century.
View
... The criteria are grouped into three categories: important, practical, and technical. The importance of indicators refers to the extent to which they are significant, useful, relevant, and representative (Brooks & Hanafin, 2005). Practicality involves data availability, feasibility, cost efficiency, and timeliness. ...
The Metrics of Happiness: Operationalizing 'Informational Well-Being'
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2012
Last year the authors presented a TPRC paper (“Does Happiness Matter?”) which introduced a new component of “informational well-being” into the general model of national well-being advanced by the Stiglitz Commission in 2009. It then connected the revised model to evaluating the goals of the National Broadband Plan. This paper builds on that framework and focuses on quantitatively operationalizing the concept of “informational well being”.To be fully captured as an empirical metric, “informational well being” must be decomposed into its constituent parts, and the interactions between them must be identified. This paper focuses on the infrastructural aspects of the concept. It reviews and incorporates the lessons of established models for measuring national information infrastructure and economic and social factors (e.g., the Network Readiness Index, the ICT Opportunity Index, the Digital Opportunity Index), but adds a new dimension.The prior composite indices share many similarities in their methodologies. However, slight differences in the way they are computed have resulted in large differences in outcomes, which often have political implications. Unfortunately, due to the inherent limitations of their methodology, none can avoid the charges of being over-simplistic and impractical as guides to policy. It is only for lack of a better alternative that this kind of metrics still remains prevalent.While acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of that tradition, this paper attempts to advance the discourse by also considering fundamental concepts, policies, applications and outcomes from other somewhat analogous network industries, such as transportation, power, gas pipelines and other utilities. Data mining techniques and structural equation modeling will then be applied to propose a more sophisticated set of metrics for evaluation of the infrastructural component of “informational well being”. The paper will then set articulate a specific new model based on this analysis.
View
GUIDE to Indicators for Monitoring of VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN
Book
Full-text available
  • Jan 2013
This guide is developed with contributions from a wide range of stakeholders of a project implemented by UNICEF in South East Europe in four countries including Turkey to contribute to the efforts in monitoring violence against children. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), as a universally accepted international law, provides a unique and universal legal framework, which acknowledges children as subjects of legal rights. The CRC defines legal criteria for the child’s entitlement to freedom from violence together with corresponding legal obligations of individuals, parents, communities and first and foremost the governments to introduce the necessary measures to ensure the realization of those legal rights. This gives governments a significant tool to build an environment where every child enjoys a safe and nurturing childhood in which they develop and grow to their full potential free from violence and want, protected from neglect and exploitation, to have good health, to learn and to play; i.e. enjoy their childhood to the full.
View
View
View
Advancing Understandings of Child Well-Being through the Strategic Development of a National Children’s Research Programme
Article
  • Sep 2012
The publication in 2000 of a National Children’s Strategy (Department of Health and Children 2000) reflected a paradigmatic shift in national policy around children in Ireland. This shift resulted in a move away from a fragmented approach to individual aspects of children’s lives (such as health, education or protection) towards a holistic approach, more coherent with current understandings of child well-being. The Strategy itself was framed by three goals, one relating to children’s participation in matters that affect them, the second to improved understandings of their lives and the final goal on improving services for children, young people and their families. The implementation of Goal 2 of the Strategy, “children’s lives will be better understood” (Department of Health and Children 2000, p.37) has been led by central government, most recently through the newly formed Department of Children and Youth Affairs and has been operationalised since 2003 through a National Children’s Research Programme. The programme has been conceptually underpinned by an understanding of children’s lives that is coherent with current thinking on child well-being and its implementation has incorporated a strategic national programme of building data, research and information. Mechanisms through which this conceptualisation has been embedded within, and promoted through, the National Children’s Research programme are outlined in this paper.
View
“They are there for you”: The Importance of Neighbourhood Friends to Children’s Well-Being
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2012
An understanding of children’s own perspectives on their relationships and experience is essential in developing a comprehensive ‘whole child’ perspective on well-being in all its domains. Eliciting authentic accounts of children’s experience requires an approach which positions children as key informants, central to the research enterprise. This article reports some of the findings of a neighbourhood based study which sought to explore aspects of children’s daily lives, particularly those autonomous spaces of childhood away from the gaze and direction of adults, within which children enact and transact their daily lives. The study findings reveal the children to be significant users of their neighbourhood with detailed local knowledge and expertise and a unique perspective on the opportunities and risks they encounter. Their social relationships, especially their friends and friendships, were found to be critical to their sense of satisfaction, in tandem with the opportunity the neighbourhood terrain afforded for physically active movement and play. Friends and friendship are experienced by children as essential to their well-being and play is the means by which they actualise this key relationship. Consistently the children named ‘space’ and ‘friends’ as the things that they most liked about their neighbourhood.
View
View
View
Development of a child health indicator system in Italy
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2001
The need for a uniform, comprehensive and action-oriented child health indicator system is widely recognised. As part of a Ministry of Health project, a working group was established in Italy in order to develop a proposal for a minimum set of health indicators to be adopted at the regional and local health authority levels, where the planning process takes place. The indicators proposed cover 17 areas of perinatal, child and adolescent health. The informing principles for the choice were relevance to the main health problems, availability of a reliable data collection system, feasibility of the collection and analysis process at the two health system levels proposed and extent to which the information provides clues for policy options. The main difficulties arise from a lack of uniform systems of classification and data collection for disabilities, as well as adequate tools for assessing quality of care and quality of life. A basic framework for analysis is suggested, including further breakdown of the indicators proposed, such as analysis by birthweight and by cause of neonatal death and by mother's education and father's employment. The information provided by the health indicators put forward needs to be evaluated within the broader scenario of the child's situation so that associated factors may be identified and clues found for intersectoral policies. Two research projects were started to evaluate the feasibility and reliability of data collection and the impact on the planning process at both the regional and local health authority levels. A European-wide initiative is proposed to tackle existing methodological problems effectively and develop a common child health indicator system.
View
PERISTAT: Indicators for monitoring and evaluating perinatal health in Europe
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2003
The PERISTAT project aimed to develop an indicator set for monitoring and describing perinatal health in Europe. The challenge was to define indicators that cover common concerns and have the same meaning within the different European health care systems. PERISTAT included i) a review of existing recommendations on perinatal health indicators, ii) a DELPHI consensus process with a scientific advisory committee composed of a clinician and an epidemiologist or statistician from each European member state as well as with a panel of midwives, and iii) a study of the availability of national statistics to construct recommended indicators. This article describes the first two components. The review identified 10 international and 13 national recommended indicator sets. It also included indicators routinely compiled by WHO, EUROSTAT and OECD. Because of the methodological limits to using existing indicators for European comparisons, a high priority was placed on improving indicators already collected. Using the DELPHI method based on the results of the review, the scientific committee achieved a consensus on ten core and 23 recommended indicators, including 12 requiring further development. The PERISTAT project was successful in identifying a set of indicators, which drew on and consolidated previous work. Consensus was not achieved on precise indicators in areas where uncertainty about appropriate indicators was high, although areas were targeted for future development. Finally, the feasibility study, which is in progress, is an essential part of the project, since it will enable member states to evaluate their capacity to produce these indicators.
View
Child Well-being: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Article
  • Jan 2003
A systematic review the child well-beingliterature in English was conducted withsearches in five databases to assess thecurrent state of child well-being research andanswer the following questions: (1) How is childwell-being defined? (2) What are the domains ofchild well-being? (3) What are the indicators ofchild well-being? and (4) How is childwell-being measured? This review updates andexpands a previous review of the childwell-being literature spanning 1974–1992. Results indicate that well-being is a commonlyused but inconsistently defined term frequentlyincluded in the study of child development. There are five distinct domains of childwell-being: physical, psychological, cognitive,social, and economic. Positive indicators areused more often in the physical, cognitive,social, and economic domains, while morenegative or deficit indicators are used in thepsychological domain. There is littleagreement in the research literature on how tobest measure child well-being.
View
Selecting an indicator set for monitoring and evaluating perinatal health in Europe: Criteria, methods and results from the PERISTAT project
Article
The PERISTAT project was charged with developing an indicator set for monitoring and describing perinatal health in Europe as part of the European Commission's Health Monitoring Programme, run by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection (DG-SANCO), which is working towards the establishment of a comprehensive health monitoring system at the community level. To develop its recommendations, the PERISTAT project carried out an extensive review of existing perinatal health indicators and then implemented a DELPHI consensus process with its scientific advisory committee, a panel composed of clinicians, epidemiologists and statisticians, as well as with a panel of midwives. Consensus was achieved on 10 core and 23 recommended indicators using methods that drew on and consolidated previous work in this field. Twelve of these indicators were targeted for further development and the other 21 for immediate implementation. A feasibility study, reported in the rest of this issue, was put into place to assess these recommendations.
View
View
Australia's Children: Their Health and Well-Being 2002. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
  • Jan 2002
  • 14
  • F Al-Yaman
  • M Bryant
  • H Sargeant
Al-Yaman, F., Bryant, M. and Sargeant, H. (2002) Australia's Children: Their Health and Well-Being 2002. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Available at: http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/phe/ac02/ac02.pdf [Accessed: 14th January 2005].
How do Nations Monitor the Well-Being of Their Children? Florence: UNICEF, International Child Development Centre
  • Jan 1999
  • J Bradshaw
  • H Barnes
Bradshaw, J. and Barnes, H. (1999) How do Nations Monitor the Well-Being of Their Children? Florence: UNICEF, International Child Development Centre.
The Well-Being of Children: Four Papers Exploring Conceptual, Ethical and Measurement Issues
  • Jan 2002
  • E Carroll
Carroll, E. (2002) The Well-Being of Children: Four Papers Exploring Conceptual, Ethical and Measurement Issues. Dublin: Irish Youth Foundation.