The Kandinsky Longitudinal Study (KLS) was created at the request of a local public school who wanted to know more about their students’ social-emotional wellbeing. To this day, researchers from the Peer Relations Lab continue to visit schools annually.
The core focus of the KLS is to detect youth at risk for social and emotional problems by surveying students and asking questions about how they are feeling (including questions on topics like self-esteem, loneliness, and social anxiety). We also ask them about the social dynamic in their classrooms (e.g., bullying, popularity, aggressive and prosocial behavior). By assessing all youth from 7th through 10th grade (the first four years of secondary education in The Netherlands), we can see how students are doing in the moment, but also overtime.
If you are a researcher interested in more detailed information about our research and datasets, visit our OSF profile at https://osf.io/8ztk5/.
Are you a teacher or administrator interested in the KLS? We are currently looking for additional interested schools to participate in the study. If you would like to learn more about our project, please reach out to us at kls [at] ru.nl (kls[at]ru[dot]nl).
Why is the study called the Kandinsky Longitudinal Study? Wassily Kandinsky was a painter known for his abstract art, such as his work featuring repeated circles that build off one another to create a bigger picture. Similarly, we are able to understand the overall picture of adolescent development by growing our dataset each year and adding the many layers of data together to answer more complex research questions.