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Children’s Rights International Study Project (CRISP)—A Shift from the Focus on Children’s Rights to a Quality of Life Assessment Instrument

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Abstract

Originally designed in the nineties to gather subjective perspective of the importance and existence of certain children’s rights at home and at the school, by students and significant adults, using cross-culturally comparable methodology, the study evolved to gather a number of subjective quality of life assessment indicators. Survey study with different types of closed questions. Three measurements in Slovenia in the last decade, 2,000–3,000 students each sweep, and smaller samples in three other countries. Data base has been built on the importance and existence of key quality of life variables and assessments of the proper age to assume certain adult-like rights that enables comparisons of values cross-culturally and between age groups, and national trends that suggest slight degradation of the quality of life of children in last 15 years. The data gathered using this methodology proved to be culture sensitive (reflecting value hierarchies of rights in different countries), age sensitive (reflecting the evolving capacities of the child to grasp more sophisticated levels of rights and the quality of life assessments), useful tool for monitoring changes in the attitudes of (different groups of) adults towards children in the times of social change and transition, and other measures. The elements of the methodology could be used in future efforts to provide such subjective indicators on a broader international scale, as well as for national monitoring of the quality of life of children.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed account and overview of the first sweep (international data gathering) of the study see Hart et al. 2001 and earlier reports by Hart and others.

  2. This would be quite questionable not only from an ethical but also from a methodological point of view.

  3. The study was designed longitudinally. The first data gathering (sweep) was completed in the participating countries by 1991/1992, the second sweep was designed to take place in this decade.

  4. The first and the second section of the questionnaire for children can be found in Appendix. For the entire set of questionnaires contact the authors.

  5. See the most recent version of the questionnaire for students, used in the 2006 sweep, in Appendix.

  6. The data were gathered by Banbehari Mukhopadyay from the Technical Teachers Training Institute in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and Georgy Ligeti from Kurt Lewin Fundation, Budapest, Hungary in the two respective countries.

  7. For full wording of the questions please consult the questionnaire in the Appendix, except for the questions 13, 17 and 21 that were omitted in the 2006 sweep.

  8. To check the significance of the differences of means please consult Tables 8, 9 and 10 in the Appendix.

  9. As noted earlier, however, we cannot exclude the possibility of an influence of the adult sample bias.

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Correspondence to Zoran Pavlovic.

Additional information

Authors wish to express their appreciation to Prof. Stuart N. Hart, for the insightful comments and suggestions to an earlier draft.

Appendix

Appendix

Cross-Cultural Study on the Rights of the Child—Children’s Questionnaire

Table 8 Significance of the differences between the answers for home and school (students 12–14, Slovenia)
Table 9 Significance of the differences between the answers for home in different sweeps (students 12–14, Slovenia)
Table 10 Significance of the differences between the answers for school in different sweeps (students 12–14, Slovenia)

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Pavlovic, Z., Leban, T.R. Children’s Rights International Study Project (CRISP)—A Shift from the Focus on Children’s Rights to a Quality of Life Assessment Instrument. Child Ind Res 2, 265–291 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-008-9031-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-008-9031-5

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