par Amerijckx, Gaëlle ;Humblet, Claire Perrine
Référence 9th European IUHPE Helath Promotion Conference (27-29/09/2012: Tallinn, Estonia)
Publication Non publié, 2012-09-28
Communication à un colloque
Résumé : Objective/purpose: A growing body of research focusing on young children mobilizes the notion of wellbeing. Though promising, the resort to this positive and broad term covers a variety of theoretical approaches and research contents. Our purpose here is to identify explanatory factors to this diversity and their related issues, and subsequently to offer a user-friendly framework for the notion. Methods/Approach: Our data consist of a review of the literature on child wellbeing among five reference databases, amounting to 209 scientific papers reviewed. Results/Findings: Our findings mainly demonstrate the major effects that theoretical frameworks concerning child wellbeing (CW) have on the nature and scope of research contents; one observation even more striking that many researches do not present explicit frameworks in this matter. To us, the CW literature rests upon five key issues of: child development theories; childhood contextualization; CW dimensionality; CW system level analysis; and data purposes. Schematically, a CW research encountering all pitfalls would be: weakness-oriented, decontextualised, one-dimensional, family centered and relying solely on previous data collection schemes.Instead, our framework rests upon a multidimensional (psychological, physical, educational, economic, and social dimensions) and multilevel (micro, meso, exo, and macro systems) approach to CW, one that values and makes explicit all advanced CW literature. This literature has been gathered around a nexus of five dual axes representing: positive and negative; objective and subjective; immediate and future; material and spiritual; and individual and collective manifestations of CW. Depending on the research context, more stress would (or should) be put on one or the other end of each of these five axes. Conclusions/Discussion : Far from addressing all CW issues, we nonetheless feel that our framework provides a more comprehensive and positive perspective on childhood, one that reckons children full - though evolving - potential and the reciprocal nature of their exchanges with their complex environment.

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