Project Title: Being a Child in the Era of Crises: Rethinking the Well-being of Children in Türkiye After the Pandemic
Project Organization: Istanbul Bilgi University
Project Support: TUBITAK Project 1001 – The Scientific and Technological Research Projects Support Program
Project Team: Pınar Uyan Semerci, Emre Erdoğan, Başak Akkan, Gözde Durmuş, Özlem As Koçbaş, Gökçe Uysal Gündoğdu, Ahmet Usanmaz, Fatmanur Parlak
Project Duration: April 1, 2023-January 1, 2025
In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, we aim to investigate child well-being in an environment of uncertainty created by intersecting crises (economic, energy, health, migration, climate and natural disasters, especially earthquakes) and on the axis of technological changes in Türkiye. To this purpose, the following activities will be carried out within the framework of the project:
✓ To plan field research with actors from different fields through participatory methods in order to reveal a comprehensive picture of child well-being in Türkiye and to conduct a mapping study of the existing ecosystem
✓ Developing an open source website for different actors, including children, to strengthen access to reliable, accurate information on child well-being and to raise awareness
✓ Developing and implementing a children’s advisory team model to ensure children’s participation in all stages of an academic research process
✓ Conducting field research to uncover the current situation and needs to support children’s well-being in Türkiye amid intersecting crisis and change
✓ Reporting field research findings through participatory methods with children and relevant actors and developing implementable policy recommendations.
Our research, which will be implemented with an interdisciplinary and participatory perspective, draws on the theoretical frameworks of child well-being, the bioecological model and the capability approach. The child well-being approach can be expressed as an analytical and theoretical tool that conveys the child’s situation from a holistic perspective in the light of objective and subjective indicators in the fields of “material situation”, “health”, “education”, “risk and safety”, “housing and environment”, “participation” and “relationships”. It also focuses on children’s reflection of their own voices as “experts of their lives”. It aims to show subjective indicators as well as objective indicators in all domains. Under each domain, subjective well-being reflects children’s own experiences, their perceptions of their own lives, their satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
The fact that the child tells and conveys his/her own life story as an active research participant forms the basis of our working method. However, subjective, and objective indicators, which are among the most important contributions of the well-being approach, will be considered together in the entire research, especially the impact of the multiple crises we are in on children’s well-being will be evaluated from this framework.
The main approach of our project is to carry out the entire process from research design to the reporting of research findings with the participation of children and relevant actors.
Our mixed-method research, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods, will be conducted with a sample of 1500 households (children between the ages of 12-18 and parents-caregivers) representing the population of Türkiye. As part of the qualitative study, in-depth interviews will be conducted with 48 children and 17 focus groups (8 children, 4 parents, 4 teachers, 1 NGO representative) will be held in Istanbul and Urfa.