GUIDE

Growing Up in Digital Europe

There is, at present, no single data source to support comparative analyses of the well-being of
children and young people across Europe as they grow up. Some European countries have regularly
invested in cohort surveys like the British Cohort Studies, the French Longitudinal Study of Children,
the Danish Longitudinal Survey of Children, Growing up in Ireland, and the National Education Panel
on Early Education and Schooling in Germany. These surveys and the resulting longitudinal data
outputs are important sources of evidence supporting policy development. However, while the merits
of collecting national longitudinal data are widely recognised, these current studies are not easily
comparable as they differ in their questions, time of administration, and sample age groups.

The Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE) is Europe’s first research infrastructure on a
comparative birth cohort study of children’s and young people’s well-being. It is designed to capture
data on two cohorts of children: a birth cohort and a sample of school-age children. Once operational,
GUIDE will collect data about individual children growing up in Europe until those children are aged 24
years in approximately 2053. In order to successfully roll out the GUIDE by 2027 and collect the first
wave of data, the Growing Up in Digital Europe Preparatory Phase (GUIDEPREP) project currently
develops the research infrastructure necessary to implement the GUIDE birth cohort study. The
GUIDEPREP started in 2022 and will run until 2025 to ready the research infrastructure for the full-
scale GUIDE piloting in 2026.

Thereby, the GUIDEPREP and GUIDE outputs will be an important source of evidence in developing
social policies for children, young people and families across Europe for many years to come.