KEEP Panel: Cognitive development of decision making competencies and societal participation

Funding period 09/2021-08/2024

With a grant from the Free State of Thuringia, Prof. Dr. Tilmann Betsch and Dr. Stefanie Lindow were able to initialize the KEEP-Panel (funding period 09/2021-08/2024; funding volume of around 397,000 euros and an additional 39,000 euros from the University of Erfurt). The KEEP-Panel is a children's panel at the University of Erfurt that was founded with the aim to investigate the development of good decisions-making in childhood and adolescence.

Decision-making competence is a central developmental task and the basis for a self-determined life and social participation. A better understanding of these processes is important from the perspective of both basic research and application. Adult decision-making has long been the subject of intensive research. But what developmental steps lead to decision-making competence in complex modern environments? How can these be promoted? Specifically, we want to find out which factors determine the cognitive development of decision-making competence from primary school age onwards. To this end, the KEEP-Panel was set up with children from the age of 6. The project builds on the findings of a previous project on probabilistic decision-making in children funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Here, cross-sectional, experimental research has been used since 2013 to investigate children's decisions in comparison to adults. With longitudinal data, the KEEP-Panel provides insight into the development of decision-making competence, especially with regard to later social participation.

The project website can be found on the pages of the ErfurtLab.