A better children’s participation in the EU (2021)

Introduction

In March the European Commission released a document on the rights of the child[i]. In the document, the Commission outlines a comprehensive strategy “to build the best possible life for children in the European Union and across the globe” (p.2).

In the document, child participation is taken seriously. It boasts: “This strategy has been developed for children and together with children. The views and suggestions of over 10,000 children have been taken on board in preparing this strategy. Children have also been involved in preparing its child-friendly version. This marks a new chapter and an important step for the EU towards genuine child participation in its decision-making processes.”

Instruments

Child participation involving over 10,000 children is impressive. When looking at the source, the report “Our Europe, our Rights, our Future”[ii], it turns out the method used for participation is sending out a survey to children (p.6) and organizing focus groups with disadvantaged children. In addition, to sending a survey a few children played “a crucial role in guiding the consultative process, including the preparation of the questionnaires, reviewing and inputting to the report and presenting report findings and recommendations to the European Commission” (p.7).

Surveys or polls in combination with focus groups, as it turns out, are a popular tool to use as a proxy for child participation. Examples are the Europe Kids Want project[iii] and the non-profit organization Child Rights Connect[iv].

Limitations of the instrument

The Europe Kids Want project stresses the limitations of a survey: “The opinion poll is not representative of a specific sample, group or country nor exhaustive in terms of coverage of the targeted population or of the issues children may face in Europe and beyond. Findings of the survey are not necessarily providing comprehensive, complete, accurate or up-to-date information.” (p.2) The report “Our Europe, our Rights, our Future” does not provide such a sweeping disclaimer although “the findings and recommendations build heavily on the online questionnaire”. The report merely mentions that girls are overrepresented as well as “older children (aged 11–17) who have access to the internet and who are active on platforms and in networks where the online questionnaire was disseminated”.

More limitations of the instrument

Even beyond mere representativeness surveys and polls are a dubious method to establish what people think. In his book Proofiness (2010) Charles Seife writes about using this instrument on figuring out “our society’s sexual habits”: “Some of these surveys in particular are extremely sophisticated and professional — they use expert statisticians and are backed by government money. But every single one returns utter garbage. It’s because we humans are liars — we simply can’t help it.” (p111) Seife is particularly suspicious of online surveys and polls: “Even the dimmest of pollsters knows that Internet polls are utterly worthless.” (p.120)

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is as blunt as Seife: “Everybody lies.”[v] People lie to each other and to themselves. One of the reasons is the social desirability bias: people “want to look good, even though most surveys are anonymous” (p.106). A second reason is given by prof. Roger Tourangeau who is quoted by Stephens-Davidowitz: “About one-third of the time, people lie in real life. … The habits carry over to surveys.” (p.107) Stephens-Davidowitz continues: “Another reason for lying is simply to mess with surveys. This is a huge problem for any research regarding teenagers, fundamentally complicating our ability to understand this age group.” (p.108) Stephens-Davidowitz urges researchers to rely on Big Data and not on surveys to find out what people actually think. He is supported by people like Christian Rudder (2014).[vi]

Our experience

As teachers, my wife, Beata Staszyńska-Hansen, and I like to present research outcomes on adolescents to our students. Sometimes we ask for their reflections, and sometimes we ask them questions from research and compare their answers with the research outcomes. It has yet to occur that students agreed on research outcomes or gave answers in line with these outcomes. To give a small example: research among Polish students found that 28% check social media, play games, browse the Internet, or chat with a friend during online lessons[vii]. In our classes, all students admitted to at least sometimes doing other things than paying attention to their teachers during online lessons.

As a result of our experiences in teaching adolescents and cooperating with them during educational projects and events, it seems that a level of trust between adults and adolescents needs to be present for students to open up.

What does it mean

Although surveys are a simple instrument to reach a mass audience and come up with impressive participation numbers, it is a very unreliable instrument. Focus groups seem a lot more promising but their current use needs improvement. They should be employed on a large scale, in every EU country, and with all kinds of adolescents, not just those who are in a disadvantaged position. The adults co-involved in organizing the focus groups should be trusted by the children participating in them. Forums as described in the document Child Participation Assessment Tool by the Council of Europe[viii], could function as such focus groups.

The starting point for focus group topics could be children’s suggestions, policy-makers suggestions, or Big Data trends.

One more thing

As a rule, child participation in the EU is used as a consultative instrument. This means that adults have the right to ignore the outcomes of the children’s participation process. This seems wrong since it opens up the option of using children’s participation as a token process only.

At the very minimum, a mechanism should be in place to enable a meaningful discussion between adults and children in case adults have a different point of view. This could be a mediation mechanism or a negotiation mechanism — anything that prevents adults from simply ignoring the outcome of a children’s participation process. This goes beyond what the Child Participation Assessment Tool recommends: “Following their participation, children must be provided with feedback and/or follow up regarding how their views have been interpreted and used; how they have influenced any outcomes; and where appropriate the opportunity for them to be involved in follow up processes and activities.” (p.30)

Conclusion

Institutions of the European Union, please reconsider the current children’s participation processes. Children deserve better than what we offer them now.

[i] COM(2021) 142, EU strategy on the rights of the child: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/1_en_act_part1_v7_0.pdf

[ii] https://www.unicef.org/eu/media/1276/file/Report%20%22Our%20Europe,%20Our%20Rights,%20Our%20Future%22.pdf

[iii] https://eurochild.org/uploads/2020/11/Euro_Kids_Want_Brochure_Nov2019.pdf

[iv] https://www.childrightsconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/final-implementation-guide-the-rights-of-child-human-rights-defenders-forweb.pdf

[v] Everybody lies (2017), p.105

[vi] Christian Rudder (2014) — Dataclysm

[vii] Ptasek, Grzegorz et al (2020) — Edukacja zdalna: co stało się z uczniami, ich rodzicami i nauczycielami, p. 30.

[viii] https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016806482d9, p.22–23