Children’s long term success at school is influenced as much by social, emotional and self-regulation skills as by academic skills and knowledge. The overall goal of our project SEED is to improve psychosocial well-being and healthy development of young children (2,5 to 6 years old), with an emphasis on those growing up in difficult circumstances. We will do this by conducting a country level screening of psychosocial well-being of 5-year-old children in 5 countries in Europe.
In each country we will collect data about 200 five year-old children from rural and urban areas and from different socio-economic (SES) backgrounds, using the UPSI-5 tool developed by ICDI. Last week, the training for data collectors by ICDI took place in Leiden. Each partner country (Latvia, Norway, Netherlands, Croatia, Hungary) was represented by their research coordinator, and 1-3 data collectors at the training.
The training included an introduction to data collection and interviews with an emphasis on communication and research skills, exploring the UPSI-5 scoring form, along with the principal and teacher interviews. Further, ethical issues, updates on seeking permissions and relevant details were discussed. Lastly, some activities were planned on putting the research into practice and handling challenging situations.
