The Growing Up in Digital Europe Preparatory Phase (GUIDEPREP) project further develops the research infrastructure (RI) necessary to implement the GUIDE birth cohort study. This preparatory work will take place across 2022 to 2025 to ready the RI for the fullscale piloting of the GUIDE in 2026 and the first full wave of data collection in 2027. Once operational, GUIDE will collect data about individual children growing up in Europe until those children are aged 24-years in approximately 2053. GUIDE will be Europe’s first comparative birth cohort study of children’s and young people’s wellbeing. The aim of the GUIDE study is to track children’s personal wellbeing and development, in combination with key indicators of children’s homes, neighbourhoods, and schools, across Europe. GUIDE will be an accelerated cohort survey including a sample of infants as well as a sample of school age children. Each Member State and Associated Country will provide nationally representative samples that are designed to retain statistical power throughout the lifetime of the study. The harmonized design will create the first internationally comparable, nationally representative, longitudinal study of children and young people in Europe. Currently the GUIDE RI is in its preparatory phase, which involves the establishment of necessary operational procedures and further crystallisation of the study concept and design. To realise the GUIDE full-scale pilot in 2026 and first wave of fieldwork in 2027, the RI needs to develop administratively, technologically, financially, scientifically, and legally. This GUIDEPREP proposal lays out clear aims for these developments in an interlocking system of activities that are shared across consortium partners and managed by the GUIDE leadership team.  

The aspiration to secure the wellbeing of children and young people is explicit in Grand Challenges such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The EU has similarly highlighted the importance of securing the future of children and young people. It has become accepted that inequalities must be thought of longitudinally and not regarded as static events unrelated to prior events and future likelihoods. Policy makers must ensure that they base their policy interventions and adjustments on the best evidence available and this must include, inter alia, cohort survey data. COORDINATE will begin to fill the serious and extensive gaps in the availability of robust and suitable data for the monitoring and evaluation of child wellbeing in Europe. The COORDINATE project brings together 22 partners from 14 countries who will initiate the community of researchers and organisations that will drive forwards the coordinated development of comparative birth cohort panel survey research in Europe. COORDINATE will: • Facilitate improved access to international birth cohort panel and cross-sectional survey data • Extend the consortium network to maximise EU and European coverage for a future Europe wide accelerated birth cohort survey • Undertake joint research in the form of a large-scale cohort pilot survey using a harmonised instrument and research design in key European countries The infrastructural community initiated by COORDINATE will benefit from enhanced access to current infrastructural data platforms, and will promote the harmonisation of and improve access to international cohort panel survey data in the study of children as they grow up. COORDINATE continues the research initiated in the FP7 Measuring Youth Well Being project (GA613368) and the H2020 European Cohort Development Project (GA777449) to prepare the next phases of Europe’s first cross-national accelerated birth cohort survey: EuroCohort - Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE).

Biographical research in sociology is usually carried out by means of in-depth interviews where people are asked to tell their life histories or experiences in a given stage of life and/or dimension of existence. Occasionally, secondary materials such as photographs, letters, timelines or life calendars are also used to complement the narrative. In both cases the focus is on first person testimonies, assuming that the information collected through these procedures provides a more direct and reliable access to the events and subjectivity of the life course. Much less explored is the possibility of reconstituting a biography not only in this way, but also on the basis of testimonies of third parties, specifically close people who can talk about the trajectories of the individual being analysed and about the relation they have with that person. What we intend to do in this project is precisely to understand how biographies can be reconstituted and analysed through multiple testimonies, using triangulation and comparison of sources of information. Mobilising a qualitative methodology, by means of biographical interviews, the aim is to comprehend how a person describes and ascribes meanings to her/his life, but also how close people perceive, present and interpret that biographical pathway. Twenty biographies will be analysed, each case being composed of the interview with the nuclear person and about four interviews with her/his family members, friends, colleagues or neighbours (of different kinship, generations, life contexts). In this way it is possible to combine each person's view of herself/himself and her/his biography with the perception that significant others have of those same experiences. Thus, it is intended to articulate an internal perspective with an external one on the same person and respective biography. This analytical strategy enables the study of the temporal, social and relational constitution of a biography, in line with the typical analytical fra...

The European Cohort Development Project (ECDP) is a Design Study which will create the specification and business case for a European Research Infrastructure that will provide, over the next 25 years, comparative longitudinal survey data on child and young adult well-being. The infrastructure developed by ECDP will subsequently coordinate the first Europe wide cohort survey, named EuroCohort.