Core-evidence.eu – The New Knowledge Platform on Children's and Young People's Online Experiences

An international research team led by the HBI is making scientific evidence on the diverse online experiences of children and young people in Europe visible and usable. Within the framework of the evidence-based project CO:RE - Children Online: Research and Evidence coordinated by the HBI, researchers from nine European countries, with the support of over 30 European partners, have compiled the state of research in the respective partner countries since 2014. The result is a knowledge platform for researchers, educators and policy-makers that pools available knowledge, systematises it and makes it accessible to different stakeholder groups. Furthermore, the knowledge base offers toolkits for theories, methods and ethical issues in research with children.
 
The knowledge platform core-evidence.eu was launched on 15 December 2021. More content and features will follow in the coming months.

Overview

Since January 2020, the international project consortium Children Online: Research and Evidence (CO:RE) has been working on the conception and realisation of a pan-European knowledge platform on the media experiences of adolescents. The team is part of the competence area "Growing up in Digital Media Environments" in the research programme "Knowledge for the Media Society" at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) and coordinates the project, which is scheduled for three years and funded by the Horizon 2020 funding programme of the European Commission.
 
In realising the project, the CO:RE project team essentially focused on five goals:

1. To pool research and evidence on children's and young people's online experiences and make it accessible in a clear form;
2. To make research data from the EU Kids Online research network accessible and usable for secondary research;
3. To develop theoretical, methodological and research-ethical recommendations for a contemporary research practice with children and young people and to make these recommendations usable through application-oriented products;
4. To provide a basis for action and recommendations for political decision-makers; and
5. To provide resources and a basis for action for stakeholders in the education sector.

Pooling Research and Evidence and Making it Accessible

The research landscape in the field of (online) media experiences of children and young people is diverse and heterogeneous. The variety of topics, theoretical and methodological approaches and research interests, but also the sometimes contradictory findings in this field of research mean that it is not always clear to stakeholder groups which core statements of scientific evidence can serve as a basis for their actions. The CO:RE Knowledge Base aims to provide an overview.

For this purpose, the project consortium - together with its more than 30 partner countries - has compiled 1,400 publications and over 880 studies (since 2014), systematised them and translated key findings into English in order to make them accessible to as many stakeholder groups as possible. The CO:RE Evidence Base forms the core of the knowledge platform.

Making Research Data from the EU Kids Online Research Network Usable for Secondary Research

The CO:RE project consortium consists largely of members of the EU Kids Online research network, whose aim was to make the data from the comparative study EU Kids Online 2020: Survey Results from 19 Countries publicly available and usable for secondary research. The datasets will be made available to researchers during 2022.

Making Application-Oriented Resources for Contemporary Theoretical, Methodological and Research Ethical Scientific Practice Accessible

The CO:RE Knowledge Base will provide application-oriented resources to support researchers in methodological, theoretical and research ethics issues. A central component of this is to identify and compile those resources and materials that have already been established as helpful tools for contemporary research. In addition, own application-oriented content has been created, such as webinars and vlog series, an ethics compass (CO:RE Compass for Research Ethics) as well as toolkits for methodological (CO:RE Methods Toolkit; coming soon) and theoretical problems (CO:RE Theories Toolkit).

Providing a Basis for Action and Recommendations for Political Decision-Makers

In the discussion about legal guidelines for the (de)regulation of the digital sphere, decision-makers often lack clear access to evidence-based and current scientific publications. The CO:RE Evidence Base presents published scientific papers and related studies from over 30 countries in a structured and standardised way in English, so that policy stakeholders have low-threshold access to available evidence-based information. In addition, policy briefs on relevant topics will be published on the knowledge platform from 2022 onwards.

Providing Resources and Action Bases for  Stakeholders within the Education Sector

The education sector faces particular challenges in the course of the digital transformation. Education and training institutions are equipped with digital tools and educators are trained to design digital literacy activities and to use media for educational purposes. Against this backdrop, the CO:RE Knowledge Base provides stakeholders in the education sector with useful information and materials on the opportunities and risks of online use. These are expected to be available by the end of 2022.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 EU.3.6.1.1 – The mechanisms to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-07-2019 – The impact of technological transformations on children and youth under the Grant Agreement ID 871018. The contents of this website reflect only the authors’ view and the Commission of the European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.