ERIC Number: EJ910015
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Feb
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0303-8300
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Available Date: N/A
How Are the Kids Doing? How Do We Know?
Land, Kenneth C.; Lamb, Vicki L.; Zheng, Hui
Social Indicators Research, v100 n3 p463-477 Feb 2011
With a focus on the United States, this paper addresses the basic social indicators question: How are we doing? More specifically, with respect to children, how are our kids (including adolescents and youths) doing? These questions can be addressed by comparisons: (1) to "past historical values", (2) to "other contemporaneous units" (e.g., comparisons among subpopulations, states, regions, countries), or (3) to "goals or other externally established standards". The Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI), which we have developed over the past decade, uses all three of these points of comparison. The CWI is a composite index based on 28 social indicator time series of various aspects of the well-being of children and youth in American society that date back to 1975, which is used as a base year for measuring changes (improvements or deterioration) in subsequent years. The CWI is "evidence-based" not only in the sense that it uses time series of empirical data for its construction, but also because the 28 indicators are grouped into seven domains of well-being or areas of social life that have been found to define the conceptual space of the quality of life in numerous studies of subjective well-being. Findings from research using the CWI reported in the paper include: (1) trends in child and youth well-being in the United States over time, (2) international comparisons, and (3) best-practice analyses.
Descriptors: Social Life, Social Indicators, Well Being, Values, Children, Adolescents, Comparative Analysis, Trend Analysis, Cross Cultural Studies, Best Practices, Evaluation Methods
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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