The voice of children on their experience of wellbeing

At the end of the 60s, serious attempts were made to develop major research about people's happiness or satisfaction with life. A significant difference emerged from these studies between an “objective ” and a “subjective ” well-being (Campbell et al., 1976; Bertolini, 1984; Ben-Arieh and Frones 2007): material conditions may not indicate anything about people's real worries and needs; what is important is how people experience their own conditions. In our research we tackle children’s subjective well-being, which means knowing the children’s experience of welfare, (the meaning beyond their material conditions): what is essential for them? What do they consider essential for a good life? Why are these elements considered essential? In order to answer these questions we developed a research with children (Coad and Lewin 2004; Lancaster 2003), in which creativity was a vital component. In order to understand the meaning constructed by children in their daily contexts, we improved a qualitative research project, creating in particular new research tools and questions, to set up “effective strategies able to react to the children and follow their guidelines (Punch, 2002). Our findings illustrate how children have sufficient competence to articulate their ideas, using a wide range of innovative research-friendly activities and multiple languages. The goal of this presentation is to show how children formed their views about their quality of life, and what significance some elements acquire in their views. The aim of a voiced research is to access “the voices from inside”, exploring meaning and intention, as we want to show the children’s experience of wellbeing from their perspective and in their own words