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Children, Adolescents and Quality of Life: The Social Sciences Perspective Over Two Decades

  • Chapter
A Life Devoted to Quality of Life

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 60))

Abstract

In the first ISQOLS international conference (1996) in Prince George (Canada) the topic of children’s and adolescents’ quality of life was absolutely minoritarian – and even more minoritarian was the presence of research using children’s or adolescents’ subjective indicators. Although children’s and adolescents’ QOL has frequently been a concept used in health-related sciences, very few publications appeared before 2000 using subjective data from big samples of children and/or adolescents, and therefore adopting a macro-social perspective.

During the years of the new millennium this panorama started to change, and some authors speak of the new “child indicators movement”, somehow suggesting that the social indicators movement has waited about 40 years to include children in the challenges assumed.

In the international arena the debates on the need of new indicators about children’s conditions of living have had much to do with the children’s rights debates grounded on the need to follow up the application of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, measuring children’s rights has been pointed out to be related with the achievement of minimum standards, while measuring children’s well-being and QOL has to do with achieving the maximum potential of human development, including human aspirations, and therefore, including human rights.

The progressive availability of an important amount of subjective indicators based on data provided by children and adolescents in more and more countries is frequently offering unexpected results, suggesting we do not know enough by far about the subjective well-being of the youngest generations. We need more conceptual debates, more research and more dissemination of research results to understand the perceived conditions of living of children and adolescents in different countries in the world, and in different socio-cultural contexts.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Barney Griffins for editing of the English text.

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  1. Research Institute on Quality of Life, University of Girona, Plaça Sant Domènec 9, 17071, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

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  1. Ferran Casas
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Correspondence to Ferran Casas .

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  1. Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti" (DiSIA), Università degli Studi di Firenze, Firenze, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

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Casas, F. (2016). Children, Adolescents and Quality of Life: The Social Sciences Perspective Over Two Decades. In: Maggino, F. (eds) A Life Devoted to Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 60. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_1

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