For the entire project period, the DISCRETION project had a total of 41 publications, which included 4 edited books, 21 peer-reviewed articles, 15 peer-reviewed chapters, and 1 report. Among the peer-reviewed articles, 52% were published in scientific level 2 journals, while 33% of the book chapters and two of the edited books were in scientific level 2 publications or publishers. The Norwegian Scientific index divides journals and publishers considered to meet scientific quality criteria into "level 1" and "level 2"."Level 2" is reserved for the internationally most prestigious journals and publishers within the discipline. A total of 19 of the publications (articles, book chapters, and reports) had either early career researchers as co-authors or they were sole authors.
Additionally, in the DISCRETION project, there were a total of 39 disseminations, including 22 conferences, 16 seminars, and 1 book launch. Thirteen of the disseminations (conferences, seminars, and book launch) had either early career researchers as co-presenters or they were sole presenters. Researchers from the project also communicated insights from the project in the mass media and at popular science events. In addition, knowledge resulting from the project was continuously communicated through the project’s website, Twitter account, and newsletter.
The Discretion-project collected a wide range of data material for a cross-country comparison of five countries: Austria, Estonia, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Spain. The data material was analyzed to map and explain the differences in discretionary decisions in child protection, to understand how the child’s best interest principle was interpreted, and how best interest decisions were justified. The data material included:
-Information about key-variables of the different child protection systems, including information about organization models, model of child protection system, legislation and regulations concerning child protection interventions, etc.
-A complete sample of first instance court judgements from each country or a region, concerning adoptions from care for one year or for several years.
-A large sample of first instance court judgements from each country or region concerning care order removals of newborn babies for one year or for several years.
-Collection of all judgments from the European Court of Human Rights where the facts of the case relate to adoption from care or where the facts of the case show that the child removed from a family was a new-born.
-Interview data with judges in Austria, Estonia, Ireland, Norway, and Spain. about their views on children and their best interest and threshold for interventions.
-Survey data (incl. randomized survey vignette experiments and experiments) from representative samples of the population in 60 countries with information about their views on child protection, paternalism, individual responsibility vs. government responsibility for children, child participation, best interest considerations,
threshold for government interventions.
