The aim of the COORDINATE project is to initiate the community of researchers and organisations that will drive forwards the coordinated development of comparative birth cohort panel survey research in Europe. 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 and young people as they grow up. The programme of work that COORDINATE will complete will continue the research initiated in Measuring Youth Well Being (MYWEB, FP7 613368) and the European Cohort Development Project (ECDP, H2020 777449) to prepare the next phases of Europe’s first cross-national accelerated birth cohort survey: EuroCohort – Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE).

What is the need?

There is an acknowledged need to address Grand Challenges, such as the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations), and an associated need for high quality data to assess progress in relation to such goals and to inform policy making aimed at securing them. Within these goals sit the aspiration to secure the wellbeing of children and young people. The European Union has 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. In this regard, it is incumbent upon policymakers to ensure that they base their policy interventions and adjustments on the best evidence available and this must include, inter alia, cohort survey data.

What are we doing?

GUIDE/EuroCohort will fill the serious and extensive gaps in the availability of robust and suitable data for the monitoring and evaluation of child wellbeing in Europe. It will be at the centre of the knowledge triangle of childhood research, education and innovation and play a vital role in the advancement of knowledge by offering high quality services to research communities, policymakers, and practitioners from different countries, engaging children, young people and service providers.
The aim of COORDINATE is realised through the following three objectives:

1. Facilitate improved access to international birth cohort panel and cross-sectional survey data
2. Extend the consortium network to maximise EU and European coverage for the full GUIDE/Eurocohort survey
3. Undertake joint research in the form of a large-scale cohort pilot survey using a harmonised instrument and research design in key European countries

What will be the outcomes?

The COORDINATE project will deliver the first conceptual and organisational system for collating and analysing the various scientific data on young people’s wellbeing across Europe. The new RI started through COORDINATE will generate a substantial amount of knowledge for researchers and contribute to important societal debates surrounding children’s wellbeing.

COORDINATE’s expected outcomes are following:
1. Starting a community that will capitalise on existing RIs and scientific excellence to build a new infrastructure supporting a ground-breaking longitudinal study of child wellbeing across Europe
2. Enhancing the exploitation of survey data on child wellbeing by the scientific community, through offering a more efficient and user friendly access to RIs
3. Strengthening the performance of the European Research Area
4. Educating a new generation of researchers and expanding existing capacity, through offering training and knowledge exchange opportunities, in order to ensure the optimal exploitation of data and tools and strengthen the status of European
5. Giving children and young people a voice in research infrastructures and research that concern them
6. Contributing to evidence-based policy making

What are the timescales?

This 48  month project started 1st April 2021 and finishes March 2025.

 

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