The GUIDE-book will be published

To successfully launch the first European comparative cohort study on the well-being of children and young people from birth to 24 years, GUIDE (Growing Up In Digital Europe: EuroCohort) is preparing a research manual. It will be published by Springer in 2026. Unlike other longitudinal study manuals, which mainly explain data analysis, the GUIDE-book will address issues of sample selection, survey design, fieldwork organisation and financial support.

The GUIDE-book will provide insight into each phase of the GUIDE project and, overall, will provide a systematic overview of the implementation of the planned European-wide longitudinal research. The GUIDE-book will explain the methodology, which has already been used in extensive previous research, and will provide an overview of the current social and political context of child and youth well-being in Europe. The GUIDE consortium has concluded that the availability of empirical evidence to inform policy development for children and youth varies considerably across European countries. While there is a broad consensus on the need to significantly improve the well-being of children and young people, financial support to implement these improvements remains insufficient. The book will substantiate the need for a European-wide evidence base to understand what interventions need to be made in children and young people policy to effectively help improve their well-being.

Across Europe, many professionals are involved in ensuring child well-being, so the GUIDE found it useful to research to benefit from their knowledge and experience. The study used a so-called Delphi survey involving interviews with experts (N=334) to capture the knowledge and experience of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers from across Europe, including Latvia. During the interviews, the experts were asked detailed and often technical questions, ranging from the concepts of well-being and priorities to appropriate scientific instruments for data collection. The Delphi survey data provided a valuable basis for contextualising understanding of how interventions needed to improve child well-being are understood in policy, practice and science.

The GUIDE-book will describe the steps required to implement the study, both in terms of the scientific development of the research design and the need to convince national governments and research funding bodies that GUIDE is a high-priority study that needs to be funded in the coming years. There are many challenges in developing a longitudinal survey of children and young people’s well-being, but the GUIDE researchers are confident that they can be overcome. The GUIDE-book will explain in detail why the accelerated cohort study design was chosen as the most appropriate European longitudinal study design. Parallel cohorts will allow for comparisons between different cohorts from the outset of the study. Although the comparison of different cohorts is not a longitudinal analysis but an age-structured cross-sectional comparison, such a method provides early analysis and allows for rapid policy interventions and impact assessments. This will help to identify transition periods and turning points that are relevant to policy and help to identify important periods for policy intervention. Crucially, the long-term economic benefits of improving policies for children and young people based on empirical evidence will far exceed the costs of conducting the GUIDE study.