Research

Four intellectual outputs are planned for the project. The first is called ‘Decline the Gap’. The activity was led by the National Children’s League, which has a broad volunteer expert base.
The research activities were led by Dávid Simon, a lecturer at the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University.
This phase of the project focused on a systematic screening of background information on bullying and NEET people.
There have been many studies published worldwide on bullying, but mainly from a psychological and child protection perspective, and much less knowledge has been accumulated on the socio-economic factors that may be crucial for NEET people.
In this project, a systematic secondary analysis of the material collected was carried out.
The next step was to develop a glossary of the main themes of the project. The glossary summarises and clarifies the concepts related to bullying and NEET young people. It has been compiled and edited by Katalin Tausz, Professor Emerita at the Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University. She is also the technical leader of the project.
The data collection was carried out in two phases: exploratory phase (focus groups) and knowledge building phase (online questionnaire).
According to the knowledge gap on the topic, we designed the exploratory phase with focus groups, where the partners gathered the views of experts in the field and NEET young people during two separate guided discussions (focus groups) lasting 2-2.5 hours. The discussions provided a detailed picture on both topics.
The focus groups were organised in Hungary, Croatia, Spain and Italy, with a total of 58 participants, including moderators and technicians. 29 NEET young people and 29 facilitators supported our work in 4 countries.

After processing the results of the focus groups, we implemented an online survey for NEET youth and experts. In this phase, we evaluated the results and findings of the focus groups and identified any gaps in the knowledge gathered. All partners (except AKNOW, which is responsible for digitisation) participated in this phase.

As part of the Decline the Gap activity, we collected responses from 544 NEET youth and 197 facilitators who completed our questionnaire. The responses will help us to better understand the views and expectations of young people and their helpers about bullying, learning, the digital world, access and intervention. These results will also form the basis for the content and methodology of the other internal indicative surveys.

A study on the survey is available on our website below.