Children’s understanding of well-being related questions: results of cognitive interviews in four European countries

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the results of cognitive interviews with 8-year-old children from four European countries – Croatia, France, Finland, and Ireland. The aim of the interviews was to pre-test a selection of well-being-related questions as a part of questionnaire development for the first European multinational birth cohort study – Growing up in Digital Europe (GUIDE)/EuroCohort. Unlike most previous studies, we focused on a younger and more age-homogenous sample, as well as a more diverse set of well-known questionnaires. A total of 68 children participated in the study. The main suggestion for the interviewing procedure is to create a safe environment yet minimize the parents’ interference in answering. The questionnaires should use child-friendly vocabulary, tangible examples, avoid complex sentence structure and negative statements. The use of timeframes in questions should be minimal. The children can use Likert-type scales, but the number of different scales in the questionnaire should be limited.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive interview
• questionnaire development
• children, well-being
• cross-cultural comparison

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2024.2312621.

Notes

1. For Croatia the approval was given by the Ivo Pilar Institute Ethical Committee (reference no. 11–73/21–1963), for Finland by the University of Helsinki Ethical Committee (statement 70/2021), for France by the INED Data Protection Officer (reference no. 2021‐DPD‐0036) and for Ireland by the UCD Human Research Ethics Committee – Humanities (reference no. HS-E-21-182-Taylor).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant No. 101008589.

Notes on contributors

Babarovic Toni

Toni Babarović is a research advisor at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb, and also associate professor at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. His main research interests are in the field of vocational psychology, in particular in areas of career development, counselling and guidance of adolescents. He had also participated in several research projects related to children and youth well-being and educational aspirations and attainment. He published over 50 refereed journal articles and book chapters.

E Krpanec

Eta Krpanec is a research assistant at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar in Zagreb. Eta is currently a psychology doctoral student at the University of Zagreb. Her research interests include children’s well-being, the relationship of teaching styles and students’ school engagement, as well as youth political participation.

M Blažev

Mirta Blažev holds master’s degree in psychology and economics and is European licensed integrative psychotherapist. She works as postdoctoral researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Croatia. So far, she has worked on seven scientific research projects, published eleven scientific papers, chapter in a book, and participated in numerous scientific conferences (about 35 proceedings).

I Dević

Ivan Dević is a research associate at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb. His research field includes child and young people’s well-being, education and STEM achievement. He is a co-author of 11 articles in scientific journals, 3 book chapters, and one book. He has presented over 40 papers at conferences. Ivan participated in 33 research projects including three FP7 and HORIZON 2020 funded projects. Ivan teaches as part-time adjunct faculty at the Faculty of Medicine at Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek, University College Aspira in Zagreb and at the University of Applied Health Studies in Zagreb.

S Downey

Sinead Downey is an aspiring educational psychologist who has completed a BA Honours in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, an MSc in Children, Education, and Youth from University College Dublin (UCD), and a post-graduate certificate in Neurodiversity from UCD. She currently works as a research associate through the Geary Institute for Public Policy and the School of Education, both in UCD. Her research interests include neurodiversity, autism in girls and women, special educational needs, and child wellbeing.

I Huttunen

Ida Huttunen research interests include socio-emotional skills, school wellbeing and academic motivation. She is interested in research that targets to promote equal learning opportunities between children and adolescents. Currently she is conducting research on middle-school students’ socio-emotional skills and school engagement.

L Panico

Lidia Panico is a Professor at the Center for Social Inequalities Research (CRIS) at Sciences Po Paris, and associated researcher at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). Previously, she was a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), and at University College London (UCL). She obtained PhD in Sociology from UCL, where she was based in the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies. Her research, at the crossroad between demography, epidemiology and sociology, aims to describe and explain socio-economic inequalities in well-being, with a focus on child outcomes and family processes. Her research uses longitudinal data, notably birth cohorts, and comparative methods.

Z Perron

Zoé Perron is project manager for the GUIDE/EuroCohort survey at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). Previously, she worked on measures of child well-being at the French School of Public Health (EHESP), and on access to autonomy for foster children, which has led to several publications in French journals.

A Santos

Aurélie Santos is a study engineer at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) Survey Department since 2018. She has accompanied research teams on the development of many survey protocols and has focused her interest on “hard to reach” populations and network sampling, in urban studies and migration studies (Trajectories and origins, Chinese immigrants in Paris region, etc.)

L. K Taylor

Laura K. Taylor is a researcher at the School of Psychology, University College Dublin. Her research focuses on peacebuilding in children and young people. Challenging the narrative that youth are either victims or perpetrators of political violence, she studies how conflict-affected young people may make positive contributions to society. Her creative approach integrating developmental psychology and peace studies, summarized by the Developmental Peacebuilding Model (Taylor, 2020), with potential to impact interventions and policy globally. Taylor has published over 80 articles and two books with collaborators in Colombia, Croatia, Israel, Ireland, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, and South Korea.

K Upadyaya

Katja Upadyaya is an associate professor at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include student engagement, academic motivation, research methodology, cultural context of learning, and lifelong learning. She is also interested in conducting research on teacher-student and parent-child interaction, and children’s and school community’s well-being. Currently she is conducting research on students’ situational experiences while learning, socio-emotional skills, and parental burnout.

J Symonds

Jennifer Symonds is Professor of Human Development at University College London. Jennifer’s research focuses on the development of individual’s well-being and engagement as they transition into and through education across the life course. Jennifer is Scientific Director of Growing Up in Digital Europe: the first pan-European cohort study of children and youth. Jennifer is also Director of CLOSER, the UKRI’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources. CLOSER works to promote longitudinal population studies through data discoverability, education and training, and knowledge mobilisation.

G Pollock

Gary Pollock is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has worked in the field of youth and childhood for three decades and is currently working on a range of projects which is developing the first Europe wide birth cohort survey. He is a survey specialist and has published on child wellbeing, youth political participation, the transition from school to work and statistical methodology.