Current status of research literature in the area of Well-being in Early Childhood

Abstract

Early childhood is an important period in a child’s development. Despite the advances in child well-being research in the past decade, there are notably fewer studies involving young children, and even fewer ones where children are active participants. This mini-review summarises recently published work on the study of well-being in early childhood and provides recommendations on the future direction of research in this area. Most research on early childhood well-being is related to health promotion and parenting. These studies define well-being varyingly and employ diverse instruments to measure it. Only one study necessitated the active participation of children. Recommendations include operationally defining well-being, more research developing instruments and methods to measure well-being specifically for young children and including the active participation of children in well-being research regardless of age.