A Comparative Expert Survey on Measuring and Enhancing Children and Young People’s Well-Being in Europe

The understanding of children and young peoples’ well-being varies greatly not just between different experts and scholars, but also across countries and cultures, depending on the historical and socio-economic context. However, an effective application of scholarly research to policy-making, especially at the supra-national level, requires establishing a comparable set of indicators that would allow measuring and comparing children and young people’s well-being across countries, over time and in relation to specific policy instruments. This chapter outlines the key findings from a Delphi survey, comprising a panel of 334 European experts in the fields of survey methodology, children and youth studies, well-being, and policy. Our findings reveal a strong consensus among experts that future studies should include both objective and subjective measures of well-being, potentially with an equal weight. Moreover, surveys should cover a lifespan from birth to 25 and include pre-natal information. We examine policy needs in relation to child well-being identified by the experts in different countries. The need for robust evidence in policy design and evaluation is frequently mentioned as experts identify important gaps between data coverage and policy relevance for some of the eudaimonic dimensions of well-being. Hence, this chapter not only highlights the differences in similarities between the understanding of well-being in different countries in Europe, and identifies a set of indicators to measure its different dimensions, but it also provides guidance as regards to specific steps that policy makers across Europe could take to enhance children and young people’s well-being.