Gwyther Rees

Systematic review of educational interventions for looked‐after children and young people: Recommendations for intervention development and evaluation

Looked‐after children and young people (LACYP) are educationally disadvantaged compared to the general population. A systematic review was conducted of randomised controlled trials evaluating interventions aimed at LACYP aged ≤18 years. Restrictions were not placed on delivery setting or delivery agent. Intervention outcomes were: academic skills; academic achievement and grade completion; special education status; homework completion; school attendance, suspension, and drop‐out; number of school placements; teacher‐student relationships; school behaviour; and academic attitudes. Fifteen studies reporting on 12 interventions met the inclusion criteria. Nine interventions demonstrated tentative impacts. However, evidence of effectiveness could not be ascertained due to variable methodological quality, as appraised by the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Theoretical and methodological recommendations are provided to enhance the development and evaluation of educational interventions.

Children’s Leisure Activities and Subjective Well-Being: A Comparative Analysis of 16 Countries

The way that children use their leisure time and how this affects their well-being are topical and much-debated issues. This chapter focuses on children’s leisure time and activities in a sample of 16 countries across four continents, using data gathered through the international Children’s Worlds survey. It compares evidence on the relative balance of leisure time and other activities; looks in more detail at the ways in which children spend their leisure time and how this varies between and within countries; and explores the associations between leisure and subjective well-being. The results show that there is considerable diversity in patterns of children’s leisure time in different countries and this is partly linked to differences in national wealth. There is evidence of differences in children’s leisure activities according to gender, age and material deprivation across most of the countries in the sample. In particular, gender patterns are fairly similar across the diverse set of countries surveyed. Finally, there is evidence of a link between more frequent participation in reading and in sports and children’s higher overall subjective well-being. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of these findings and directions for future research.

Changes in Self-Reported Well-Being: A Follow-Up Study of Children Aged 12-14 in Algeria

This article reports on a 2-year follow-up study (443 Algerian children). Using a variety of satisfaction measures, along with detailed questions relating to family, school, local area, material deprivation, and daily activities, we aim to explore changes in the self-reported well-being of children from age 12 to 14. Satisfaction with health and friends remained stable, meanwhile satisfaction with school decreased more for boys than for girls, but satisfaction with family, time use, and material possessions decreased for girls. This pattern was further confirmed by childrens reports on the selected activities, experiences, and facilities provided to them. Regression analyses indicated that satisfaction with material possessions predicted satisfaction with life and positive affect, meanwhile satisfaction with family life and friends predicted eudaimonia.

Friends and Peers

This chapter provides an overview of children’s views about the quality of their relationships with friends and classmates. It also looks at two aspects of negative peer experiences that children may have at school – being hit by other children and being socially excluded. These kinds of experiences have been found in many countries to have a notably negative association with children’s sense of well-being. As with the other thematic chapters the discussion here will focus on comparisons between countries and also on variations in children’s evaluations of their peer relationships and frequency of negative peer experiences according to age and gender.

Details of the Study

This chapter provides an introduction to the second wave of the Children’s World study which generated the data on which this book is based. It provides details of the structure and content of the survey questionnaires; the selection of countries to take part in the study; the sampling strategies used within countries; research ethics; how the survey was administered; data preparation and cleaning; and the final achieved sample. Further information about these topics is available from an initial comparative report on the second wave (Rees and Main 2015) and from the project website. Some basic information about statistical analysis procedures is also provided in the final section of the chapter.

Overall Well-Being

This chapter looks at how children feel about their lives as a whole. The measurement of overall well-being is a cornerstone of the Children’s Worlds project. As well as providing a valuable overview of how children feel about their lives across countries, it also provides a basis for analysing the relative importance of various factors for children’s overall well-being. This chapter provides a descriptive account of the measures of overall well-being included in the survey. It describes variations between countries based on mean well-being and also inequalities in well-being; and considers some of the possible factors that explain these variations. This general approach of exploring variations, including a focus on inequalities, is one which will also be employed in subsequent chapters which look at specific aspects of children’s lives. The chapter shows that looking at means and inequalities creates a slightly different picture of comparisons between countries, with some countries ranking higher for mean well-being and other countries ranking higher for equality in well-being. This is an important issue which will also be pursued later in the book. This chapter will also look at variations within countries according to demographic characteristics – age and gender. Chapter 14 will look at a selection of other factors in children’s lives that might explain why, within countries, some children have substantially higher or lower overall well-being than others.

Variations in Children’s Well-Being Between Countries

This chapter focuses on variations in individual children’s subjective well-being within countries and looks at some factors that might potentially explain them. It takes a comparative approach through looking at similarities and differences in patterns of associations across countries. One source of potential variation is demographic characteristics such as age and gender. Variations according to children’s age group and gender have already been discussed in Chaps. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. A brief synthesis of the findings is presented. The chapter then goes on to look at two factors that are potentially amenable to change through policy or practice interventions – material deprivation and negative peer experiences. These are both factors that have been found to be associated with children’s overall sense of well-being in some studies in specific countries. The analysis presented shows that the strength of association between these factors and children’s life satisfaction varies from country to country. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the subjective well-being of children in specific circumstances – children not born in the country of the survey and children not living with their family – analysis of this kind may highlight particular sub-groups of the child population where targeted interventions could help to improve children’s experienced quality of life.

Children’s Home and Material Circumstances

This chapter discusses children’s satisfaction with the home that they live in, how this varies between countries and according to age and gender. It also looks at their material circumstances through two questions – one about satisfaction with possessions and one relating to the extent to which children worried about family money. Children’s answers to these two questions often diverge and provide different perspectives on the way that they view their material and economic circumstances. There are also some notable age-related differences with younger children reporting greater worries about family money than older children. The chapter also presents some analysis looking at the links between children’s material deprivation (as discussed in Chap. 4) and their answers to each of these three questions about their home and material circumstances.

Health, Body Image, Safety and Freedom

This chapter covers a range of important topics covered in the surveys. The first two of these topics are about children’s views of themselves – namely their health and their body image. The other two topics are more psychological and cross-cutting in nature and relate to freedom and safety. One of the striking findings presented in this chapter relates to particularly substantial variations in children’s satisfaction with their body image between countries and between females and males within some countries. Issues of freedom and safety have been found to be important dimensions of children’s well-being in a number of previous studies in individual countries and this is one of the first studies to have gathered data on these aspects across such a diversity of contexts. The findings on safety, in particular, create a complex picture with children’s evaluations of their safety varying across the different environments of home, school and local area in different ways in different countries. The patterns raise interesting questions about whether it makes sense to think about children’s feelings of safety in the abstract or whether these feelings are more context-specific.

The Context of Children’s Lives

This chapter considers information gathered from children that illustrates the different contexts of childhood in different countries around the world. First it looks at the type of home that children live in and the people that they live with. It illustrates a great diversity of circumstances and highlights some important issues that link to current demographic trends in different parts of the world, such as the growing prevalence in some countries of children spending time living in two homes when their parents separate. The chapter also briefly summarises information about whether children were born in the country of the survey. It then moves on to look at a measure of children’s material deprivation which is being developed as part of the Children’s Worlds project. This section highlights wide variations in children’s ownership of and access to resources in different countries. The chapter concludes with an analysis of variations in material deprivation within countries according to the contexts of children’s lives (home, family and country of birth) covered earlier in the chapter.