Commonalities and differences: How to learn from international comparisons of children's online behaviour

As part of the EU Kids Online project, the network developed a methodology for hypothesis testing in a cross-cultural setting, building only on existing research. The aim was to be able to draw conclusions about commonalities and differences in children's online behaviour beyond providing only individual country descriptions. In doing so the network relied on a systematic and theory-driven collection of information on a country level, which was then analysed in a thematic way and subjected to a series of quality control measures. The results from the analysis proved a significant contribution to the knowledge base on children's online behaviour at a substantially lower cost than in a project aiming for the collection of primary data.