For the first time, this article will provide a cross-national profile of adolescents who provide unpaid care to their ill or disabled family members in six European countries with varied levels of awareness, policy and service provision regarding adolescent young carers. Utilising an online survey, 2,099 adolescent young carers were identified in Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. This article focuses on the impact of unpaid care on their mental health, well-being, physical health and education. Their preferences for informal and formal support were also examined. These groundbreaking findings help promote a ‘rights’ approach to adolescent young carers, which can serve as a critical driver for supportive policy creation on both a country-specific and pan-European level.

Many studies in the field of social support (e.g., Hobfoll, 1985; Thoits, 1985; Cutrona and Russell, 1990; Kienan, 1997) show that the effectiveness of a certain type of provided support and mechanisms by which the support works are often highly dependent on a specific situation, where support is needed. For instance, emotional support may be provided in a situation (e.g., an accident), where an affected person needs or expects help of a more practical kind. The provided unsuitable type of support may thus cause additional stress, dissatisfaction, feelings of being misunderstood, controlled or alienated. The context of a specific situation therefore conditions how effective a certain type of support can be. When selecting a measurement instrument presumed to be the best for assessing social support networks and social support functions we have to consider whether to ask a lot of questions about the social support network, the received social support and the perception of social support using complex items, such as name generators, or whether there are simpler ways at our disposal to correctly assess the social support provision, such as role relationship items. We should also decide whether to measure only the perception of social support or the actually received support at particular occasions as well. In this paper we compare and analyze the composition of the social support network assessed by the Antonucci's hierarchical approach, the perceived social support within social support network, and the role relation approach based on received support during 15 major life changes as they have occurred within the last three years. The composition of the social support network (overall and partial across four types of social support) is compared to the overall composition of received support.

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Some studies (e.g., Kogovšek & Hlebec, 2008, 2009) have shown that the name generator and the role relation approaches to measuring social networks are to some extent comparable, but less so the name generator and the event-related approaches (Hlebec, Mrzel, & Kogovšek, 2009). In this chapter, the composition of the social support network assessed by both the general social support approach and the event-related approach (support during 15 major life events) is analyzed and compared. In both cases, the role relation approach is used. In addition, in both approaches a more elaborate (16 possible categories ranging from partner, mother, father, friend to no one) and a more simple (6 possible categories ranging from family member, friend, neighbor to no one) response format is applied and compared. The aim of the chapter is to establish, in a controlled quasi-experiment setting, whether the different approaches (i.e. the general social support and the event-related approach) produce similar social networks regardless of the response format (long vs. short).

Hiter razvoj in vedno večja vloga informacijsko-komunikacijskih tehnologij zahtevata bolj razvite digitalne spretnosti posameznikov. Prispevek se osredotoča na koncepta digitalnih spretnosti in reševanja problemov v tehnološko bogatih okoljih, ki bosta obravnavana tudi na podlagi empiričnih podatkov, pridobljenih v mednarodni študiji PIAAC. V uvodnem delu je podan pregled literature in so predstavljeni rezultati predhodnih raziskav s področja merjenja digitalnih spretnosti ter podatki o uporabi storitev informacijske družbe med članicami Evropske unije. V drugem delu članka analiziramo rezultate, pridobljene v študiji PIAAC. Ti rezultati so pokazali, da imata največji vpliv na uspešnost reševanja problemov v tehnološko bogatih okoljih starost in izobrazba, kar potrjujejo tudi rezultati drugih raziskav. Prispevek zaključujemo s predlogi za izboljšanje trenutnega stanja vključenosti vseh skupin prebivalstva v programe usposabljanja na področju digitalnih spretnosti.