When do children take part in armed conflicts by choice or by force? While political scientists have explored the reasons for child recruitment in recent years, existing data sets have several limitations for finding the causal relationship between child involvement and potential factors that drive children to join armed conflicts. Therefore, this research aims to contribute to the research on child soldiering by introducing a new dataset. Especially focusing on the rebel groups' side, the dataset, namely Child Soldiering in Conflict Zones (CSCZ), includes some important information about the format of child recruitment: voluntary or coercive. With other important improvements to the existing dataset (i.e. format of recruitment, yearly observation, spatial information), this article provides an overview of the dataset and explains the process of data collection, challenges, and further developments. The CSCZ offers researchers and policy-makers new opportunities to analyse the crucial aspect of civil war, in particular the involvement of children in armed conflict.