An Istat survey on children and young people: analyzing feedback from respondents

Abstract

Since 2014, Istat has been carrying out surveys in which young people are protagonists. The new edition of the Survey “Children and young people: behavior, attitudes, and future projects” (year 2023) was aimed at collecting information on the living conditions of Italian adolescents and adolescents from a migratory background aged between eleven and nineteen years. In an era of crisis and profound social change, such as the current post-pandemic period, there is a need to further enrich the statistical information collected and analyzed for the implementation of policies that enhance the human capital of the very young and improve their well-being. One initial goal of this contribution is to discuss the innovations introduced in the statistical process to reach young people. Specific strategies adopted by Istat include a web questionnaire optimized for any kind of device (including smartphones), the use of QR code to directly access the form and the availability of the questionnaire in Italian and nine other languages. The main objective of the contribution is to analyze, through textual analysis, the suggestions gathered in an open-ended question placed at the end of the survey. We will use statistical models like Analysis of Specificities, Sentiment Analysis and Cluster Analysis to examine term occurrences, identify the main concepts, and retrieve semantic relationships between them.