ISQOLS Webinar, "Family Relationships and Children’s Well-Being" Presenter: Dr. Stephanie Heß, 2025 ISQOLS Best Dissertation Award Recipient

10:00 am EST/4:00 pm CET

The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) is pleased to host a webinar with the award recipient of the 2025 Best Dissertation Award and Research Fellow Dr. Stephanie Hess (Germany), focusing on children’s subjective well-being and the pivotal role of family relationships. While the well-being of adults has been widely measured, monitored, and compared across nations, children’s perspectives have long been overlooked or filtered through parental interpretation. This webinar will explore how children’s self-assessments are increasingly being recognized as a valid and necessary source, and what this shift could mean for research, policy, and practice. The session will address current global trends in child well-being, highlighting persistent blind spots such as the reliance on parent-reported data and potential cultural bias in measurement techniques. Drawing on international and longitudinal data, the webinar will examine how family environments influence children’s subjective well-being, development, and mental health. It will close by reflecting on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted children’s well-being and how these changes differ across social and cultural contexts. By employing theory-driven, child-centered measurement approaches, this webinar aims to provide practical insights for researchers, practitioners, and family policymakers to sustainably foster children’s well-being not only as a private family matter but as a cornerstone of societal resilience and long-term prosperity.