European Cohort Development Project

The European Cohort Development Project (ECDP) is a Design Study which will create the specification and business case for a European Research Infrastructure that will provide, over the next 25 years, comparative longitudinal survey data on child and young adult well-being. The infrastructure developed by ECDP will subsequently coordinate the first Europe wide cohort survey, which we name EuroCohort. This is achieved through the following three objectives: i. Building support from key political policy makers with a brief which covers child well-being as well as national funding agencies tasked with infrastructural spending on science and survey data collection ii. Develop a scientifically excellent research design iii. Establish a robust operational framework that will ensure the logistic integrity of EuroCohort. The culmination of ECDP is in the creation of an infrastructural platform with a commitment from key stakeholders across Europe and from which the next stages in finalising EuroCohort can begin. There is at present no equivalent data source available to scientists to comparatively analyse the well-being of children as they grow up and therefore to develop policies to improve their well-being. As the respondents to EuroCohort grow up an increasing body of data will develop, becoming ever richer and informative, able to show the ways in which national policies have made impacts and showing where policy interventions can make significant improvements. ECDP has a tripartite focus on securing political support, operational robustness and scientific excellence. We recognise that each of these imperatives are necessary to the development of a successful research infrastructure, as scientific excellence alone is not enough. ECDP comprises a range of Work Packages that detail the specific requirements of a EuroCohort, the costs that would be involved and the policy benefits that accrue.