New Community of researchers working to improve child wellbeing
Manchester Metropolitan University lead international project that will transform young people’s life chances

 

 

Project COORDINATE

COhort cOmmunity Research and Development Infrastructure Network for Access Throughout Europe

 

The COORDINATE project brings together 22 partners from 14 countries who will initiate the community of researchers and organisations that will drive forward the coordinated development of comparative birth cohort panel survey research in Europe. 

CIES-Iscte is one of the partners, with Magda Nico as Local Coordinator and Nuno Almeida Alves as member of the team.

 

COORDINATE will:

  • Facilitate improved access to existing survey data on child wellbeing
  • Extend the Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE/Eurocohort) survey network
  • Initiate the GUIDE survey with a large-scale cohort pilot survey using a harmonised instrument and research design in key European countries

 

How COORDINATE will Improve child wellbeing

  • Initiate a community of researchers working to enhance child wellbeing
  • Begin the first ever Europe-wide birth cohort survey to track children’s wellbeing as they grow up
  • Ensure that high quality survey data will inform policies that directly affect children’s lives  

 

Giving children a voice in research that concerns them

COORDINATE will establish Youth Advisory Boards (YABs) in the UK, Portugal, Croatia, and Finland to engage young people at all levels and stages of the research. The YABs will overview and advise researchers on key questions regarding the project.

 

Developing research capacity across Europe

COORDINATE will facilitate improved access to existing survey data on child wellbeing, increase longitudinal survey capacity across Europe through webinars, summer schools, and grants for trans-national visits, extend the GUIDE survey network, and initiate the GUIDE survey with a large-scale cohort pilot survey in Croatia Finland France and Ireland. 

 

Led by Professor Gary Pollock of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Policy Evaluation and Research Unit and Associate Professor Jennifer Symonds of The Geary Institute at University College Dublin, COORDINATE has been awarded €5 Million funding by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 to undertake a range of activities that will build the capacity and infrastructure to collect and use longitudinal survey data to improve child wellbeing across Europe.

 


 

 

Prof. Pollock “The seismic effects of the COVID-19 crisis on young people’s education and mental wellbeing underlines the importance of understanding how policy decisions made today affect them in the years to come. In the UK, we have witnessed huge changes to their daily lives, from home-schooling to changes to exams and ongoing issues over the extension of free school meals.   

 

Assoc. Prof. Symonds “A Europe-wide birth cohort survey will allow policymakers to access large amounts of data on measures of young people’s health and wellbeing, such as stress at school and happiness in the home, and how these are affected by decisions they make at different stages of their young lives. We believe that this will give children a louder voice in the conversations about issues that affect them. 

 

Prof. Pollock “We are delighted to be awarded funding to take another step closer to the delivery of Europe’s first birth cohort survey, and to lead the next stage of this important project here at Manchester Metropolitan.”

  


 

 

COORDINATE is the next phase of the GUIDE project funded by the Horizon 2020 programme in recognition that policymakers across Europe are currently unable to draw upon consistent, comparable and high quality data on child wellbeing to inform policy.

 

GUIDE will be an important source of evidence in developing social policies for children, young people and families across Europe for many years to come. It will be an accelerated cohort survey including nationally representative samples of new born babies and school age children. With two cohorts taking place in parallel it will be possible to make cohort comparisons early in the life of the survey.

 

Why policy-makers value longitudinal surveys

Longitudinal surveys routinely inform policy development. Longitudinal data is important as it can be used to show how the experiences of different cohorts of people vary over their life course. GUIDE offers policy-makers the following:

  • Unique insights into key transitions in children’s lives
  • The ability to make international comparisons on child and youth wellbeing
  • Opportunities to evaluate the impact of policies over time

 


 

 

For more information about, GUIDE, please visit: https://www.eurocohort.eu

For an animation on the importance of a Europe wide birth cohort survey visit: https://www.eurocohort.eu/news/eurocohort-now-explained-in-a-short-animation/id/165

 

COORDINATE project partners

 

1

The Manchester Metropolitan University (Coordinator)

GB

2

University College Dublin, The Geary Institute

IE

3

Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, European Research Infrastructure Consortium

NO

4

Institut Drustvenih Znanosti Ivo Pilar

HR

5

Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Pompeu Fabra University)

ES

6

Institut national d'études démographiques

FR

7

University of Essex (The Institute for Social and Economic Research)

GB

8

Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče Koper

SI

9

Europaisches Zentrum Fur Wohlfahrtspolitik Und Sozialforschung (European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research)

AT

10

ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology)

PT

11

Helsingin Yliopisto (University of Helsinki)

FI

12

Alma Mater Studiorum- Università di Bologna 

IT

13

Stichting CentERdata

NL

14

University College London (Centre for Longitudinal Studies - CLS and Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources – CLOSER)

GB

15

Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie Van Wetenschappen - KNAW (Generations and Gender Programme – GGP)

NL

16

Gesis-Leibniz-Institut Fur Sozialwissenschaften Ev (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences)

DE

17

Ipsos GmbH

DE

18

TNS UK Ltd (Kantar Public)

GB

19

cApStAn SA

BE