Giving children a voice, listening to their concerns and letting them participate in political, professional and social issues is not only asserted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but also offers an important orientation for decisions related to childhood, youth and family.

Introduction

The international research project Children's Worlds is designed in this spirit. The third wave of the project took place in 2019 and Switzerland was invited to participate for the first time. For Switzerland, participation in the third wave of the survey, which involves research teams from 35 countries, is a great opportunity to generate knowledge about the needs and circumstances of young people and to raise public awareness. The research team from the Institute of Childhood, Youth and Family at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) has been assigned the Swiss part of the study, which will be realized with the support of Fondation Botnar and the Office for Youth and Career Guidance of the Canton of Zurich.

Goals

The aim of the Swiss project is to survey more than 1,500 children aged 8-12 years about their living situation in German-speaking Switzerland, French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino. The project focuses on the concept of well-being. Everyday emotions, such as being happy or sad, play a role, as well as satisfaction with one's own life and various aspects of it. For example, it is asked how one feels in certain places, e. g. school, how satisfied one is with one's friendships, whether one is cared for, whether one is listened to, what freedoms one has and what hopes and expectations there are for the future. The results of the international research project and the research data will be published on the international project website:http://www.isciweb.org

Methodology

The ZHAW project is part of a worldwide project initiated and internationally coordinated with the support of the Jacobs Foundation. Children's Worlds has been running since 2011 and has set itself the task of closing research gaps on children's well-being and life situation by interviewing children themselves. By means of a thematically wide-ranging questionnaire, children between the ages of 8 and 12 can provide information on important aspects of their lives. In the first two waves of the survey, more than 95,500 children from over 18 countries took part and completed the same questionnaire in their own languages.