Survey on child wellbeing indicators

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• Survey on child well-being indicators
• in Italy
• Valerio Belotti
• Coordinator Italian Childhood and Adolescence
  Documentation and Analysis Centre

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Public Policies and Data

• Good Policies ...... Good Data? (its easy!)
• Good Data ..... Good Policies? (its hard!)
• ... In Italy

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Public Policies and Data
Good Policies ......

• Good Policies ......

...... Good Data?
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TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE

• The national centre from 1997 to today
• Find basic data concerning children , lost in
  the institutional statistics
• Organise all the basic data and indicators in the
  traditional academic and socio-demographic
  categories
• 170 facts and indicators on-line

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WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

• ARE THEY USEFUL FOR TARGETED QUESTIONS ON A
  SPECIFIC THEME, ON A SPECIFIC PUBLIC POLICY (HOW
  MANY CHILDREN HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM THEIR OWN
  FAMILIES?)
• ARE THEY DIFFICULT FOR NON-EXPERTS TO CONSULT?
• The contexts in which the data are collected are
  not meaningful for the lives of the children
• THEY DO NOT RESPOND TO THE opinion makers (WHO
  WANT STATISTICS IN SYNTHESIS (ARE THE CHILDREN
  BETTER OFF/WORSE OFF THAN BEFORE?)
• THEY DO NOT HIGHLIGHT THE BASIC DATA WHICH ARE
  MISSING OR ARE NOT COLLECTED
• THEY DO NOT HELP TO COMMUNICATE - TO BUILD A
  PUBLIC EVENT IN WHICH TO HIGHLIGHT THE CHILDRENS
  DAILY SITUATION

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NEW OBJECTIVES

• Identify domains of meaning in which to
  aggregate the data and the indicators
• BUILD SYNTHETIC MEASURES TO MEASURE THE CHANGE
  IN THE CHILDRENS SOCIAL CONDITION
• Communicate synthetic and legible data to the
  mass media
• Contribute to highlighting in the public sphere
  the theme of childrens well-being
• Accompany public policies

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• Cfr.
• Crc 1989 3P
• Bradshaw et al. 2007 2008
• Unicef-Irc 2007

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Indicators and dimensions of meaning

• Indentification and calculation of the indicators
  AVAILABLE TODAY to distribute in the different
  dimensions of meaning

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RESTRAINTS IN THE CHOICE OF INDICATORS

• REFERRED DIRECTLY TO CHILDREN
• CONSISTENT IN THEIR RELATION BETWEEN THE
  INDICATOR AND THE MEANING OF THE DIMENSION
• AVAILABILITY IN TIME
• BOTH SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE
• PROVIDED BY THE INSTITUTIONAL SOURCES (Istat,
  MINISTRIES, RegionS, CentrE, EU, WHO)

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NATURE OF INDICATORS AND TERRITORIES

• NATIONAL

• CONTEXT

• Regional (n 20)

• NATIONAL

• WELL-BEING

• Regional (n 20)

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Domain OF MEANING AND INDICATORS
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SYNTHESIS OF OBJECTIVES

• A. Changes over time
• B. Performances of the different regional welfare
  services

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Regional welfare performances procedures

• The general map is reduced in size and in the
  indicators
• References to a two or three-year period due to a
  lack of annual data
• Summary indexes of indicators built from z-scores
• Summary indexes not based on a simple average but
  on a pondered average based on correlation
  coefficients between the various indicators

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Relazioni familiari Z-scores e Pesi 2005-2006
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Family relations 2 classifications 2005-06
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Final regional classifications 2005-2006
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Objective B. Changes over time ..

• We are still in the analysis phase .
• Our intention is to establish, with a jury of
  experts, some (few) indicators for each of the
  dimensions of meaning and to propose annual
  variations .

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Problems and Opportunities

• We are still far from an ideal map, but we are
  beyond a simple starting point. Perhaps there is
  no other social condition in which, in Italy,
  there are so many regional indicators. Thanks to
  the impetus given by the Crc 89
• Various indicators are available at a national
  level
• The continuous increase in surveys hinders
  comparison between different time periods
• The evident lack of some indicators serves to
  legitimate and promote specific statistical
  surveys
• Some indicators do not adequately represent
  certain dimensions of meaning (we need the
  courage to remove some of them)
• It is necessary to reinforce the
  monitoring/process evaluation of the policies in
  order to have more stringent and consistent
  indicators

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Public Policies and Data

• ... GOOD POLICIES ARE NEEDED TO PRODUCE GOOD
  DATA.....
• ... AS WELL AS SOCIAL RESEARCHERS OF COURSE,
• BUT THE QUESTION OF POLICIES IS ANOTHER MATTER!