Data and measures

This chapter presents findings about child well-being measured in terms of need, rights, poverty, quality of life (QoL) and social exclusion. They are drawn from a reanalysis of data from phase one of an exploratory study in the UK funded by the Department of Health and aimed at providing evidence on the nature of need among children in the community, the extent to which they and their families use children's services and how these agencies, together with coping strategies, affect children's development (Axford et al, 2003). The dataset contained information on 689 children and their families living on a moderately deprived and ethnically diverse inner-city housing estate in London. This represents 62% of the 1,116 children estimated to have lived on the estate at the time. Tests indicate that although the sample was not representative of children in England and Wales, it was representative of all children on the estate (measured in terms of age, first language and number of children resident). Data were collected in the period April-July 1998 and covered the child's situation at the time as well as providing a retrospective view of the previous year. In most cases (528 children) the main source was the child's principal carer, from whom information was gathered by way of one-hour semi-structured interviews. The sample was boosted by 161 other children from the estate using data that were collected from social services and education welfare files using a separate schedule. The two data collection instruments covered the same topics: risk and protective factors in different areas of the child's life; coping strategies used by the child and their family to address difficulties; and interactions with a number of children's services agencies.

Just over a third of the children (N=234) were judged against the five concepts using this decision-making instrument and the summary forms. A sample of this size was deemed to be sufficiently large for the statistical procedures used in analysis, and, since the decision-making process itself required exhaustive analysis of each case, it would not have been feasible with the given time and resources to apply the measures to all children in the dataset.