Keywords

4.1 Introduction

Despite substantial academic and policy interest in well-being there is, as yet, no universally accepted definition. In the academic literature it is often used as an over-arching concept to refer to the quality of life of people within a given society. In defining the concept of well-being, a distinction is also usually made between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches and is measured using both objective - not filtered by perceptions and independent from personal evaluations - and subjective measures, i.e., explicitly express subjective states, such as perceptions, assessments and preferences. A more recent approach to children and young people (CYP) well-being is to incorporate their own perspectives themselves. Children and young people centric well-being studies are at a relatively early stage, but reflect a major paradigm shift, including them as active agents in measuring and monitoring their own well-being (Mason and Danby 2011; Fattore et al. 2012). Articulating the authentic voice of CYP to further the understanding of their well-being has therefore become more commonplace (Dex and Hollingworth 2012; Gabhainn and Sixsmith 2005; Fattore et al. 2007, 2009).

The purpose of this chapter is to enhance our understanding of CYP well-being by focusing on the perspectives of a culturally diverse group of CYP on a range of issues which contribute towards their well-being. It draws on qualitative international comparative material from the MYWeB (Measuring Youth Well-Being) projectFootnote 1 regarding conceptions of well-being among CYP from four European countries. Knowing how children and young people understand well-being is central to the development of survey instruments such as would be required for a European Longitudinal Study of Children and Young People (ELSCYP). Based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups, with children and young people this chapter addresses the following questions:

  • How do children and young people understand the concept of well-being? What do they attribute to well-being? Which are the main factors they consider important for their well-being?

  • What are the similarities and differences among the four European countries?

  • What are the differences across the early lifespan observed, i.e., between children and young people?

While a longitudinal survey on CYP’s subjective well-being arguably offers the best approach to understanding young people’s transitions and collecting robust data for evaluating child well-being policies at the EU and its member state level, it poses several challenges and raises a variety of issues (see Chap. 8 in this volume). One of these is that in order to develop and conduct a comparative longitudinal survey on CYP’s well-being, knowledge of the range of understandings and perceptions about well-being across Europe are central. Insights from qualitative comparative studies are essential to be able to successfully develop a questionnaire which will facilitate the collection of valid data and the analysis here based on the MYWeB data complements other ongoing projects seeking to do this (for example Fattore et al. 2016).

Chapter 1 of this volume has shown that child well-being research can be divided broadly into two perspectives, the hedonic and the eudaimonic approach. The hedonic approach defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance (Ryan and Deci 2001). By contrast, the eudaimonic approach maintains that not all desires would yield well-being when achieved (Ryan and Deci 2001). It focuses on meaning and self-realisation and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning within society. When collecting and analysing data for this chapter, the researchers articulated both conceptions of well-being. In addition, we also employed the grounded theory approach and aimed to step out from these pre-defined concepts of well-being so that the voice of CYP – their views on well-being and their understandings of factors that contribute to well-being – would be taken into account.

4.2 Children and Young People’s Understanding of Well-Being: The Fieldwork

The fieldwork component of the MYWeB project was completed in several locations and consisted of children and young people from eleven EU countries (Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and the United Kingdom). The MYWeB fieldwork involved a total of 450 children and young people from the abovementioned European countries (Ferrer-Fons et al. 2015: 3). This chapter focuses on CYP voices from four countries: Slovakia, Portugal, Greece, and Estonia. These comparisons offer a useful insight into two contrasting post-socialist and two contrasting southern European countries. Fieldwork took place between October 2014 and January 2015.

Within each country children were interviewed from two purposively sampled schools. The selection criteria for the schools were based on stated criteria such that the two selected schools in each country should be different in terms of the socio-economic characteristics of the area and therefore of the family background of the children. The methods of data collection used were individual semi-structured interviews – a common tool developed in English and translated into local languages - and focus groups which were conducted either in schools (e.g. classroom, computer room, library, etc.) or in other places (e.g. university facilities). During all the interviews and the focus groups children and young people were informed about the project and its scope and they and their parents signed consent forms prior to taking part. The fieldwork conducted in the four countries, which are the focus of this chapter, included 77 interviews and 16 focus groups with 94 participants, 79 male and 92 female, aged between 10 and 24 years old and is described in more detail below in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1 Fieldwork details and socio-demographic characteristics
Full size table

The remainder of this chapter describes the findings from the four countries on children’s and young people’s understanding of well-being. Broad use of quotes from the children and young people studied are used to highlight these findings and to express, in their words, what well-being means to them. As such this chapter is truly child (and youth) centric. In the conclusion, the key findings are put into wider context, in an effort to identify specific areas that need to be addressed in the development of an ELSCYP.

4.3 Exploring the Major Domains of Well-Being Among Children and Young People in Four European Countries

4.3.1 Relationships Among Family, Friends and at School

Supportive relationships have been seen as a positive for all human beings. Therefore, relatedness has been defined as a basic human need which is essential for well-being which should be universal across different contexts (Ryan and Deci 2001). It is, therefore, no surprise that in all countries respondents emphasised the role and importance of good relationships with their family and friends as crucial for their well-being. Interviewees almost unanimously agreed on the invaluable support they receive from their family and claimed that with a steady and healthy familial environment their efforts and struggles for a successful life are made easier. Children tend to refer more emphatically, more frequently and with more detail the familiar relations when compared to young people, who tend to emphasise friends and peer groups more than children. For example, when explaining what well-being means the following were raised:

No conflicts at home, having my friends in a good mood with me, that’s it. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

To be with my family, to have friends. Things that for some people have no meaning, but for others have a lot. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

Relationships within family households are, however, not homogeneous. Children identify and order different members of the family in terms of the frequency of conflict (with siblings being the most problematic). While children were asked to think about a good day when they felt happy, the younger ones tended to talk about non-routine events together with family and friends. Several mentioned that they were very happy on a family day trip, for example:

[a day is great if] we go to a great place or something great happens! It's like I don't have to go somewhere alone. That we [family] all can be together and then we all together go to some place... like into a Water Paradise [a water park]! (male, 10 years old, Estonia)

Children appear, most of the time, to be indirectly referring to their family or to their household. They might refer to their family’s company and/or their love and support. Although this is an emotional feature of well-being, children explicitly focus its cause in exterior settings and characteristics. Their well-being is, then, a consequence of something outside their control, or at least this is how they transmit this idea. When describing what was understood by well-being, the following was mentioned:

It means to feel good, to have love all around me to make feel good. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

It’s when a person is comfortable, when a person likes the way life is. (male, 10 years old, Portugal)

It’s to be good in terms of health, having friends and living with whom we love, I guess. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

Family, friendships and school environments are important centres in holistic understandings of well-being among young people. In connection with family, well-being for young people, through the eyes of a member of the older age group in our research, ‘is at home where I live with my parents and we are happy, without any problems’ (male, 14 years old, Slovakia). He mentions that well-being decreases when parents fight among themselves or they have significant financial problems. For Estonian youngsters, being together with parents and other relatives (e.g. grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters) was associated with enjoying oneself and feeling good, calm and comfortable, illustrated as follows:

When I stay with my relatives, then I feel calm, I feel peace of soul, it is comfortable and merry. But in the company of my friends it is different – it is a kind of groovy and cool. We are just chillin’ out, and that’s it. (female, 17 years old, Estonia)

I am quite happy, I have friends, family, happy family...I have good marks at school, I think I am intelligent, I have many friends, everything that I need. For now I am very happy. So far. Maybe, when I get older and need to earn money, but I will sort it out somehow. (male, 14 years old, Slovakia)

This confirms an attitude of Estonian youth when the company of friends and acquaintances of the interviewee’s own age was associated with having fun together, doing things which excite them, getting involved in activities and situations which were perceived as ‘chill’ or ‘cool.’

For Greek young people, the family dimension of well-being was sometimes associated with tensions they sometimes face with their parents or about not seeing them enough due to their busy daily schedule. ‘I do not want to think my future life because I see that my parents are so stressed and they work so many hours and I don’t like it’ (female, 15 years old, Greece).

Good relations with family and friends were also an important aspect of happy life in the lives of Slovak young people. Having good friends and a close family makes them feel they have less worries and they have more free time. However, they also worried about issues related to family; for example, about the relationship with stepmothers and not having enough freedom from their father. In addition, family context and the emotional support that the family members are able to give to their children.

Some teenagers may have family problems, in badly structured families, with parents that don’t care about them and are not worried about the course of their lives. (female, 15 years old, Portugal)

Family always helps because it is our safe haven when things are not going well. It’s where we go to find shelter and try to fix our problems. (female, 19 years old, Portugal)

Among these groups of CYP, education seemed to something which often surfaced in different contexts and meanings. School was seen to have several positive meanings. It was associated with friends - with class - and schoolmates that one meets at school. For some, it was associated with the joy and excitement of learning new things, with self-development. It was also associated with preparation for the future: for university studies, choosing a profession, finding a job that earns good money and brings pleasure. In general, school was mentioned as a positive source of well-being for instrumental reasons (having good grades) as for contextual ones (such as friendship emergence). The interviews also showed an important contrast: young people also have worries arising from school. Sometimes, the negative issues arise from laziness at work or final exams but school was also associated with bullying, dullness, and with conflicts with teachers.

Children from the younger age group associated school with spending too much time away from their family, where they would rather spend more time. Many of the Greek children mentioned that when they heard that there was to be a teacher strike and that they were not going to have classes that they were very happy.

No lessons and no school would make a perfect day. (female, 11 years old, Greece)

Greek children often reported being unhappy and stressed when they have a lot of homework or when they have difficult tasks to cope with in school or even when they have a fight with friends. Perceptions of an overloaded everyday program, which includes not only school activities, but also extra school work appear to be a cause of stress. In this regard, free time is of great value and promotes a feeling of satisfaction and content as they have the opportunity to be engaged in other (often outdoor) activities, meet with their friends and clear their minds from everyday pressure. Similarly, children in Estonia talked about the stress of learning/doing homework saying that it is often hard to meet the demands of teachers.

4.3.2 Economic and Material Aspects of Well-Being

In the case of economic and material well-being, two sub-aspects can be distinguished: the comfort of not having to worry about money (objective condition of life) and that some young people boast about their better economic condition. Combining these two components, it can be said that young people recognize the existence of not only social inequalities (mainly income based) but also the existence of different identities, based on class, consumption and life styles.

Yeah, rich people always have ‘well-being.’ For rich people, well-being is an everyday thing. (transgender, 19 years old, Portugal)

There are people that are much richer than others. So there are people that are much poorer than others, and do not have as many possibilities. Unfortunately, I think having money has an influence on personal well-being. So there are people that have more well-being than others! The causes for the differences are personality and the relation each person has with others. (male, 18 years old, Portugal)

If you do not have money for proper treatment you will not be good. But if you have money and bad health, it is not good either. A person should have enough money for medicine when he gets ill in order to be well. (focus group, Slovakia)

Some young people mentioned material issues but tended to view them from a practical perspective. Importantly, they generally do not equate well-being with luxury – they tended to argue that they are well when they have food, drink, good living conditions, when they have some clothes and maybe a car to commute. There was often an expressed pragmatism such that conspicuous wealth was not always regarded as desirable in itself. An interviewee from Slovakia concurs that to be well ‘you just need a place to live, clothing and food and you are ok’ (male, 15 years old, Slovakia).

In contrast, however, one respondent viewed material aspects as a crucial aspect of well-being. For instance, a 13 year-old Slovak girl considered that well-being should refer to ‘luxury life, better life, when you have money to buy anything you want,’ but she added quickly that ‘having family, friends is also very important’ (interview, female, 13 years old, Slovakia). Another girl from a Slovak focus group explained: ‘at first sight I realise financial issues to be well, money, security. Of course, emotional feelings are also important, but first priority would be money’ (focus group, Slovakia). Hence, while there are associations between material wealth and well-being, these are not definitive.

Responses about living conditions included not having economic problems and not being discriminated against by the ‘popular’ and rich kids at school.

Money is a means for us to be able to do things that make us feel good: having lunch or dinner with friends, going on holiday with our friends, etc. (male, 16 years old, Portugal)

In order to be happy, a number of respondents from Slovakia claimed that it is important to have money, love, good life start or career development. There was a belief in the importance of work but also an awareness that some jobs were more enjoyable than others and that some jobs did not pay well. Young workers in this sample felt that it was important for young people to have sufficient resources to enjoy life. According to them a lot of young people suffer from a lack of money. These young people said that they feel happy mostly among friends; they consider friendships to be the most important factor in this respect:

Friends, you have never enough of them. It is always great to have them to carry you, to help you out. And also it is good to do sports, to be healthy. And learning, we learn throughout life to have a good job and money to enjoy life. We also like listening to music…But education itself does not guarantee you the good job, you also need to practice and have contacts… (focus group, secondary school, Slovakia)

4.3.3 Emotional Aspects of Life Satisfaction

The emotions expressed by our CYP were related to their understanding of well-being. For example, in Greece, a feeling of satisfaction was often derived from the fact that they have good and loyal friends, that they like their house and the area they live in, and they have strong and good relations with their family: ‘You can talk with your parents, you can discuss with them the problems you face at school’ (female, 11 years old, Greece). Furthermore, they expressed satisfaction knowing that their parents are employed and thus are able to pay for their leisure activities. Children in Estonia and Slovakia also expressed that the satisfaction with life is derived from a broader social context:

I am very happy to spend my time with horses. I am generally a very positive person and I always try to smile. And I am not happy when people around me frown. (female, 13 years old, Slovakia)

Many children found it hard to point out aspects in their life they do not like at all. Still, the face-to-face individual interviews created more opportunities to express themselves openly and some issues did emerge:

I am satisfied with everything at the moment, except that I eat a lot of sweets and that I, ... sometimes, I get so nervous that I start hitting others. (male, 10 years old, Estonia)

There is also a tendency, visible in a more heterogeneous group of young people in Portugal when it comes to age, to give more structural, situated, concrete answers on the meaning of well-being. It is not clear why this specific group of people mention more than others the relation between well-being and basic needs, for they are socially heterogeneous and not necessarily disadvantaged. For example:

Having a home, food on the table, friends and family. I think that is enough for a person to have well-being. (male, 18 years old, Portugal)

Not having economic struggles. (transgender, 19 years old, Portugal)

Having healthy nutrition and a good home and not having economic struggles. (female, 15 years old, Portugal)

Some children evoked a connection between emotional well-being and tranquillity, peace of mind and autonomy of will. Being physically healthy was also a factor that tended to be raised by the majority of the participants:

For me to feel good, I only need my family, my friends, my health, and having people’s love. I don’t need anything else to be happy. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

Living in peace, the way a person wants, I guess. Not being always... I don’t know the word but... Being able to have my own opinions and not living by anyone else’s. (female, 10 years old, Portugal)

All respondents agreed on the negativity of a lack of free time. It was common to stress that society or some people put too many expectations on them and consequently they feel pressure and stress due to a vast amount of activities they are engaged in. For that reason, almost all the respondents claimed that free time is significant in order to be able to relax, hang out with their friends and entertain themselves. In this regard, the availability of leisure time is taken as an important indicator of happiness, satisfaction and at the end of well-being. Many respondents agreed that freedom and the ability to do what you like the most is important for a good and happy life.

Some young people in Estonia mentioned satisfaction and positive emotions derived from being involved in leisure activities and in some instances, it was related to achieving distinct results. For example, one interviewee described having received a prize from a young musicians’ competition as one of the most pleasant events in her life. Another interviewee described that satisfaction which he gained from reading and analysing pieces of ‘belletrist’ writing, and writing literary criticism as being among the most satisfying things he had experienced in recent times. Also, joy of learning new things at school and studying favourite subjects was mentioned as a source of well-being and satisfaction. Several interviewees mentioned that they derived excitement and satisfaction from learning and getting to know new things and new knowledge. Importantly, they distinguished between the instrumental value of knowledge and skills and then also mentioned separately that learning new things about subjects that they liked was exciting and interesting to them, that this was a value in itself:

Oh, I get so excited and satisfied when I learn new things about chemistry and biology at school! (female, 14 years old, Estonia)

Another girl (15 years old, Estonia) said she was very interested in knowing more about languages and several other subjects and that she studied those subjects with great interest.

These themes were, however, only mentioned by a few. The majority of Estonian interviewees did not mention such experiences or such drive for self-improvement, self-actualisation and self-realisation. Therefore, it would appear as if satisfaction derived from self-actualisation and self-realisation is important for relatively few. Interviewees who considered self-development, self-actualisation and self-realisation to be important, were similar with other interviewees in other respects. This suggests that self-actualisation comes in addition to usual and normal aspects of life that were mentioned by other people. It does not replace more common experiences but it complements them or adds to them, adding details and making the mosaic more varied and more complex.

In the focus groups, our older participants had an opportunity to take a deeper look into their understandings of well-being. The emerging picture was more nuanced and detailed, differentiating between well-being and happiness; especially Portuguese youngsters made this distinction. Well-being is for them the achievement of basic objective and subjective conditions of life, while happiness is at a higher level, and is usually merely momentary or gradual, or cumulative. This is similar to Maslow’s (1943) hierarchical typology of human needs. In this sense, to these young people well-being is considered as a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve happiness.

Well-being is a basic characteristic that you have to have in order to reach happiness, but it’s a different thing. (male, 17 years old, Portugal)

It’s like well-being is merely to survive. (female, 18 years old, Portugal)

It’s a mean to an end: happiness. (female, 16 years old, Portugal)

4.4 The Contextual Differences Among Children and Young People in Measuring Well-Being

Our interviews, as expected, showed that asking children about their perception of well-being require child-specific methods (e.g. using concrete wordings instead of abstract questions, asking about their daily experiences rather than general concepts). This issue came up in Portugal where children could easily deal with questions related to the objective of measuring well-being through their opinions, practices and experiences; these questions were answered with a high degree of detail, rationalisation and exemplification. But talking about abstract notions of well-being was clearly a difficult task to deal with. The answers to questions aiming for their definition of well-being, such as what is well-being or what constitutes well-being, had a low degree of precision, detail or complexity. Similarly, the vast majority of children in Greece had difficulties when asked to address the concept of well-being in an abstract manner. Challenging was also the task to deal with another abstract term – quality of life – which some of them did not understand. As Chap. 6 in this volume shows, questions need be designed appropriately so that they can be matched to the level of children’s cognitive ability to comprehend different aspects of well-being.

Nonetheless, Slovak children generally had little trouble when asked to talk about well-being; they did not connect it exclusively to material things such as housing or cars. They tended to associate it with (a concept of) happiness, good health and having opportunities to work. They reacted to the questions about happiness and satisfaction with aspects of life (family relations, community/municipality, school), but tended to skip questions on more general and abstract themes like health and social inequality issues, perhaps because of their young age – they either did not pick up the question at all or said they were not interested.

In Estonia, children’s understanding of well-being in general meant mostly feeling well and happy or having fun. Non-material aspects in general refer to emotions and feelings. These were most often associated with parents and other members of the family, with close relatives but equally so with friends and peers. Interviewees mostly talked about positive emotions, negative reactions were mentioned less often. Positive emotions referred to feeling secure, happy, feeling cared for and feeling needed by others. A notion closely related to emotions was of having good relationships with other people. Contacts are significant not only in an instrumental sense but also in the sense that interaction with other people influences mood and is valuable in its own right.

Unlike the younger children, young people in Greece were familiar with the concept of well-being but even more so perhaps with the term quality of life, though they did not always define it explicitly clearly. The vast majority of young people agreed that people’s quality of life depends on many factors; amongst them good health is characterised as the most valuable. Almost all interviewees claimed that besides good health, the close, intimate and calm relations with their family members were equally important. Interpersonal relations in general were seen as one of the core aspects of well-being as they deemed both family relations, relations with their friends as well as with other people who did not belong to their circle of closest friends amongst the most important factors for a good life.

…when someone has the ability to cope with his needs, no matter what needs are these, I mean mental, financial. It is difficult to have a good quality of life in our time because we have many obligations and it is difficult to be achieved. (male, 15 years old, Greece)

Although physical and material well-being was also mentioned by the Portuguese youth, this appeared to assume a secondary role in the majority of their statements. Physical well-being is mentioned more frequently by boys, and material well-being is mentioned more frequently by those with a more disadvantaged social background or experiences.

In the group of Estonian youngsters, well-being was perceived in a relatively complex manner, as they used both the hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of well-being when talking and analysing the notion. However, such a multidimensional view emerges more easily in group interviews. In focus groups and in individual interviews, a distinction between material and non-material aspects of well-being came to the fore. Material aspects in general referred to services and things that can be obtained through commercial transactions for money (e.g. clothes, food, residence, education, leisure time spending, and travelling). Since the majority of the young people did not earn living themselves (although some of them had a part-time job or had work experience from earlier times), assuring such things was seen contingent on one’s parents.

The Slovak experience with young people shows their well-being is to a higher degree connected to money than in other countries. They didn’t mention other areas or fields spontaneously that would influence their well-being. There was also a notion that well-being is not something related to young people directly. The focus group suggested an individualised meritocratic dimension:

If you study well, you will get a better job and this complements the well-being as well. (focus group, secondary school, Slovakia)

4.5 Conclusion

The qualitative work undertaken in Estonia, Greece, Portugal and Slovakia concerning the conceptions of well-being among children and young people raised a number of significant issues that are crucial to the development of a pan-European longitudinal survey on the well-being of children and young people. However, the reading of these findings must also take into account that they are not an account of all the countries participating in the MYWeB project and more so that they do not cover the full European diversity. The diversity of fieldwork strategies employed in face of the time and process constraints found in field arrangements also adds some limitations to the comparability between countries, and especially uncovering the possible variety across age groups, gender, social class or ethnicity.

Temporality is another issue that must be considered in the reading of this data and findings. The fieldwork was undertaken close to the ending of the deepest world financial and economic crisis since the financial crisis of 2008 – something even more salient in the case of Greece and Portugal –, and that was certainly engraved in the words, thoughts and concerns of at least part of the children and young people that participated in this research.

Children and young people present significant differences of understanding concerning the notion of well-being. The capability to relate with the concept and the multiple dimensions and domains associated with it grows substantially with the progression in the life-course, a factor that must be considered in the development of a longitudinal survey on children’s and young people’s well-being in Europe.

However, children in the four countries managed to resolve this issue with a close association between well-being and happiness, a concept understood in a much clearer fashion. Well-being for children is though the product of a difficult to discern combination of psychological and material elements, involving emotions and states of mind emanating from within themselves or from their immediate surroundings (family) as much as comfort and security. Young people, by contrast, define well-being in a more diverse and complex way. Its content often includes holistic definitions, combining physical, mental, social and material elements in different degrees. Age, gender and social class were the chief contributors to differences within countries. Indeed, these demographic differences were often more import than country specific findings. This is particularly important as it suggests that an ELSCYP is feasible in regard to measuring the well-being of CYP across Europe comparatively.

The major domains of well-being among children and young people add significant depth and complexity to the analysis. Family, friends and school are the major domains of well-being common to both age groups, added by self-esteem, economic conditions and sports in the case of young people. However, these same domains may also simultaneously emerge as potential sources of material and/or psychological discomfort for children and young people, most obviously when there is something problematic about friend or family relations. Family is consistently referred as a domain of well-being but also sometimes described as a locus of conflict or material deprivation. School is simultaneously a place of learning, of recognition of good performance and interaction with peers, as a place where social inequality emerges and turns visible. The future is envisaged between the potential to accomplish one’s aims and ambitions and the precocious anxiety to find a stable and financial rewarding job. The option made by interviewees to speak about one or the other poles (or even both) of these domains probably relates to the subject’s subjective self-positioning in the social structure and personal experience of different forms of inequality. This necessarily means that measures to ascertain the well-being of children and young people must interact closely with structural factors and symbolic effects in the individual’s and respective parent’s lives: social class, education, ethnicity and its translation into different interpretations and embodiments of well-being.

It emerged that young people see an interaction between material and psychological factors of well-being. It is the combination of good relations with friends, close and supporting family relations together with financial comfort what makes a good life. Furthermore, and apart from the importance of family and friends, education is considered as a crucial component of well-being, despite the difficulties and the pressure they face, since education is seen to provide young people with the necessary skills to achieve their professional goals, as they argue. On the other hand, another opinion expressed was that young people should be close to nature and take care of their physical needs in the same way as their psychological and mental needs.

Differences among the four countries were hard to grasp in a systematic manner. The multidimensional conception of well-being is generally adopted but with rather different weights, either privileging psychological well-being in some countries either referring more to physical and material elements in others. However, it is difficult to ascertain if this is an outcome of different attitudes and representations of children and young people in the four countries or, more probably, if these differences emerge through particularities of each fieldwork process: the short number of participants and diversity of recruitment strategies applied might have some implications on the results obtained.

Cultural and socio-structural differences concerning definitions, conceptions and domains of well-being among children and young people in different European countries, the effect of factors such as gender, education, social class and ethnicity and its potential changes from infancy to young adulthood, are powerful arguments to incorporate children and youth perspectives in developing measurements of well-being. Some of the challenges to develop a longitudinal survey on well-being of children and young people in Europe included the difficulty of young children to deal with abstract notions and preparation of age-adapted questions, the difficulty of comparing these type of questions through several waves of respondents and, of course, the theoretical and methodological challenge of devising measures, procedures and fieldwork strategies sufficiently robust for similarities and differences across countries to emerge in a clear and systematic way. The theoretical, methodological and operational difficulties implicated in such a task are immense, but also would be the scientific and social benefits brought by this endeavour to children and young people across Europe.