Life Patterns
Life Patterns is an Australian Research Council funded project following the lives of young Australians since the 1990s.
The project has followed two cohorts of young Australians during the last 30 years: Cohort 1 who were aged 18 in 1991 and Cohort 2 who were aged 17 in 2005. Since 2022-23, the project is following a new cohort of 17-year-old Australians who have become members of Cohort 3.
Find out more about findings from this new cohort of participants on our Reports and Publications page.
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News and updates
Overview
Life Patterns is a mixed-methods, longitudinal study of Australian youth, which means that it follows young people overtime through the collection of survey data and interviews. Studies like Life Patterns are advantageous for understanding change over time because the longitudinal nature of the data means that the same people can be followed overtime. From this, we can understand what has happened to young people since they left school–where they have been and what their hopes and aspirations are for the future. The quantitative data collected from surveys allows us to track young people’s statuses in education, employment, housing, wellbeing and family, which is complemented by qualitative interviews with respondents whose stories provide context and greater meaning to their experiences.
Life Patterns Cohorts
Cohort 1
Life Patterns was established in 1991 by Professor Johanna Wyn and Associate Professor Peter Dwyer with the intent of understanding how young people navigated life following the completion of secondary school. The first cohort of young people, now known as Cohort 1, comprised of 29,155 students who completed school in the Australian state of Victoria. The majority of young people in this cohort were born in 1973 and have been thought of as members of the Generation X cohort. In 1995, a representative sample of around 10,985 respondents from the original cohort was re-surveyed to detail events and experiences about their life since 1992. In 1996, the sample was reduced to 2,000 respondents largely representative of the original sample and since then, the sample has been re-surveyed every two to three years with individual interviews being conducted with 50 to 100 participants.
Cohort 2
In 2005, a second cohort of young people or what has become known as Generation Y, born between 1988 and 1989, was established. Originally, 1954 young people who were in Year 11 in secondary schools in New South Wales and Victoria were recruited and surveyed. A further 2,023 Year 11 students from Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were included in late 2005 to broaden the geographical sampling frame and both sets were merged into one cohort, which is now known as Cohort 2. A top-up sample of 348 young people who were studying at TAFE in ACT, News South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria were added to Cohort 2 in 2009 to counterbalance the heavy representation of tertiary graduates in the original sample. Cohort 2 has been sampled every year since 2006 and a subset of 30 to 50 participants are interviewed every two years since 2007.
Cohort 3
A third cohort of young people will be recruited in 2022.
Funding
- 2021 – 2026
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Young people shaping livelihoods across three generations (DP210100445).
Investigators: Johanna Wyn, Helen Cahill, Dan Woodman, Hernan Cuervo, Jenny Chesters, Julia Cook, Carmen Leccardi (University of Milan-Bicocoa) and Rachel Brooks (University College London). - 2016 – 2020
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Learning to make it work: work and wellbeing in young adulthood (DP160101611).
Investigators: Johanna Wyn, Dan Woodman, Helen Cahill and Andy Furlong (University of Glasgow). - 2010 – 2015
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Young People Negotiating Risk and Opportunity: A reassessment of transition pathways (DP1094132).
Investigators: Johanna Wyn and Lesley Andres (University of British Columbia) - 2005 – 2009
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Pathways Then and Now: new student transitions to adulthood in a comparative context (DP0557902)
Investigators: Johanna Wyn and Lesley Andres (University of British Columbia) - 2002 – 2004
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Flexible career patterns: graduate redefinitions of outcomes in the new labour market (DP0209462).
Investigators Johanna Wyn, Peter Dwyer and Lesley Andres (University of British Columbia). - 1998 - 2000
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Typologies of youth pathways and the vocational integration of 1991-96 post-compulsory education participants in a comparative international context (A79803304).
Investigators: Johanna Wyn and Peter Dwyer.
Research Team
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Redmond Barry Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Johanna.Wyn@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile | Google Scholar
Johanna Wyn is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and the Academy of Social Sciences, UK. She leads the ARC funded Life Patterns longitudinal research program. Her research explores how young people navigate their lives in a changing world, with a focus on the areas of transition, gender, well-being and inequality. Wyn’s work recognises that young people, as active citizens and cultural creators, shape and contest the nature of youth.
Research Interests: youth, gender, transitions, longitudinal research, inequality
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Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Helen.Cahill@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile
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Professor in Sociology, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Dan.Woodman@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile
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Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Hernan.Cuervo@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile | Google Scholar
Hernán Cuervo is an Professor in the Faculty of Education. His research interests are located in the fields of sociology of youth, youth transitions, rural education and theory of justice. Hernán’s research program is built around the project of addressing equity and social justice for young people, with a particular focus on rural spaces. In over a hundred publications and presentations, he has contributed to academic debates on youth transitions, with a particular attention to the intersection of ideas and practices of aspirations and belonging for rural youth, and on the application of theory of justice to the experiences of rural students, teachers and schools. Hernán is past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Youth Studies (Springer). His latest books are: ‘Thinking about Belonging in Youth Studies’ (w/ A. Harris & J. Wyn, 2021, Palgrave); and 'Youth, Inequality and Social Change in the Global South' (w/ A. Miranda, 2019, Springer).
Research Interests: youth transitions, rural youth, belonging, theory of justice, longitudinal studies
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Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Jenny.Chesters@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile | Google Scholar
Dr Jenny Chesters is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education. Her research interests include inequality in educational attainment and transitions between education and employment throughout the life course. Her publications include peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters reporting the results of quantitative data analysis. Her teaching includes research methodologies, and she coordinates the capstone projects of Master of Education students
Research Interests: inequality in educational attainment, transitions between education and employment throughout the life course, social stratification, international comparative research
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Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle
Julia.Cook@newcastle.edu.au | University of Newcastle Profile | Google Scholar | X (formerly Twitter)
Dr Julia Cook is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include the sociology of youth, time and housing, and the intersections of each of these topics and economic sociology. Her most recent research addresses young adults’ pathways into home ownership; regional, rural and remote tertiary students’ experiences of housing after relocating to pursue their studies; and young adults’ navigation of debt and financial assistance, with a particular focus on small amount credit contracts and buy now pay later financial products. She recently published her first book Imagined Futures: Hope, Risk and Uncertainty (Palgrave, 2018). She is co-director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Network and is on the editorial boards of the journals Time & Society and Journal of Applied Youth Studies.
Research Interests: youth, housing, intergenerational relationships, time, interpersonal financial relationships
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Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Quentin.Maire@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile | Google Scholar | Bluesky
Quentin Maire is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education working on the ARC-funded Life Patterns project. Quentin is a sociologist researching schooling, education and young people, with a particular focus on social inequalities. He is a comparativist, uses quantitative and qualitative methods, and seeks to historicise contemporary social phenomena. He published his first monograph ‘Credential Market: Mass Schooling, Academic Power and the International Baccalaureate Diploma’ with Springer in 2021.
Research Interests: sociology of education, inequality, youth studies, comparative and international research, citizenship
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Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Eric.Fu@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile | Google Scholar | X (formerly Twitter)
Dr Fu joined the Life Patterns longitudinal research project in 2018. He has expertise in young people’s everyday use of digital media, young people’s digital identities and citizenship, and media and digital literacy education. He has published in journals and edited book collections in the field of youth studies and citizenship education.
Research Interests: young people and digital media and citizenship, media and digital literacy education
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Research Fellow, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
fiona.druitt@unimelb.edu.au | University of Melbourne Profile
Fiona Druitt joined the Life Patterns team as a Research Fellow in 2024. In addition to holding a PhD in the humanities and social sciences, Fiona also holds a double degree with honours in science, specialising in mathematics and physics. Fiona’s research employs critical, historical, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and explores novel ways to open research methods and modern disciplines onto one another. Fiona’s Life Patterns research currently asks how neoliberalism (as a project of modernity) and post-industrial economies shape the livelihoods and sociality of young Australians over time.
Research Interests: youth studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, critical theory and modern science
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Professor, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
rachel.brooks@education.ox.ac.uk | University of Oxford Profile | Google Scholar | Bluesky
Rachel is Professor of Higher Education at Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK, an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, and co-editor of the ‘Research into Higher Education’ book series, published by Routledge. She has published widely on numerous topics in the sociology of higher education, including international student mobility, student politics, and the experiences of students with caring responsibilities. She is currently leading a large Economic and Social Research Council-funded project (‘Student and Politics’) that is exploring whether higher education politicises today's students. Her recent books include: Constructing the Higher Education Student (with A. Gupta, S. Jayadeva, A. Lainio and P. Lažetić); Reimagining the Higher Education Student (with S. O’Shea); Education and Society: Places, Policies Processes; Materialities and Mobilities in Education (with J. Waters); and Sharing Care: Equal and Primary Caregiver Fathers and Early Years Parenting (with P. Hodkinson).
Research Interests: sociology of education (particularly higher education), youth studies, sociology of the family
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Emeritus Professor, The University of Milan-Bicocca
carmen.leccardi@unimib.it | University of Milan-Bicocca Profile
Carmen Leccardi is a Professor of Cultural Sociology and director of the PhD program in Applied Sociology and Methodology of Social Research at the University of Milan-Bicocca. From 2013 to 2015 she was President of the European Sociological Association. She was President of the European Sociological Association between 2015 and 2017. Her most recent book A New Individualism? Individualization, Subjectivity and Social Bonds, an edited collection in 2017.
Research Interests: social time, gender and generations, culture models and processes of cultural and social change, qualitative research methods–hermeneutical approaches
Reports and publications
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Books
Discover the many books published on the Life Patterns project.
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Book Chapters
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Research Reports
Read the Life Patterns research projects, dating back to 2001.
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Participant Reports
Read the latest participant reports for Cohort 1, Cohort 2 and Cohort 3.
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Media
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Research Articles
Access research articles written about the Life Patterns project.
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Conference Presentations
Discover papers presented at conferences about the Life Patterns project.