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 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.

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-u 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.

A third cohort of young people will be recruited in 2022.

Funding

Meet the research team

Research team

Professor Johanna Wyn

Redmond Barry Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email: Johanna.Wyn@unimelb.edu.au
Johanna’s University of Melbourne profile
Johanna's Google Scholar profile 

Research interests

1. Youth
2. Gender
3. Transitions
4. Longitudinal research
5. Inequality

Biography

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.

Professor Helen Cahill

Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email: Helen.Cahill@unimelb.edu.au
Helen’s University of Melbourne profile

Professor Dan Woodman

Professor in Sociology, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Email: dan.woodman@unimelb.edu.au
Dan’s University of Melbourne profile

Associate Professor Hernan Cuervo

Associate Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email:  Hernan.Cuervo@unimelb.edu.au
Hernán’s University of Melbourne profile
Hernán’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Youth transitions
2. Rural youth
3. Belonging
4. Theory of Justice
5. Longitudinal studies

Biography

Hernán Cuervo is an Associate Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School 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 currently the 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).

Dr Jenny Chesters

Senior Lecturer, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email: Jenny.Chesters@unimelb.edu.au
Jenny’s University of Melbourne profile
Jenny’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Inequality in educational attainment
2. Transitions between education and employment throughout the life course
3. Social stratification
4. International comparative research

Biography

Dr Jenny Chesters is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School 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 MGSE Master of Education students

Dr Julia Cook

Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

Email: julia.cook@newcastle.edu.au
Twitter: @julia_anne_cook
Julia’s University website profile
Julia’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Youth
2. Housing
3. intergenerational relationships
4. Time
5. Interpersonal financial relationships

Biography

Dr Julia Cook is 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

Dr Quentin Maire

Research Fellow, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email: quentin.maire@unimelb.edu.au
Twitter: @qtmaire
Quentin’s University website profile
Quentin’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Sociology of education
2. Inequality
3. Youth studies
4. Comparative and international research
5. Citizenship

Biography

Quentin Maire is a French-Australian Research Fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School 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.

Dr Jun (Eric) Fu

Research Fellow, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Email: eric.fu@unimelb.edu.au
Twitter: @ericfu0922
Eric’s University website profile
Eric’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Young people and digital media and citizenship
2. Media and digital literacy education

Biography

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.

International research partners

Professor Rachel Brooks

Professor, University of Surrey, United Kingdom.

Email: r.brooks@surrey.ac.uk
Twitter: @_rachel_brooks
Rachel’s University website profile
Rachel’s Google Scholar profile

Research interests

1. Sociology of education (particularly higher education)
2. Youth studies
3. Sociology of the family

Biography

Rachel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey, 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 European Research Council-funded project (‘Eurostudents’) that is exploring the ways in which higher education students are understood across Europe. Her recent books include: Reimagining the Higher Education Student (with Sarah O’Shea); Education and Society: Places, Policies Processes; Materialities and Mobilities in Education (with Johanna Waters); and Sharing Care: Equal and Primary Caregiver Fathers and Early Years Parenting (with Paul Hodkinson).

Professor Carmen Leccardi

Professor of Cultural Sociology, The University of Milan-Bicocca

Email: carmen.leccardi@unimib.it
Carmen’s University website

Research interests

1. Social time
2. Gender and generations
3. Culture models and processes of cultural and social change
4. Qualitative research methods–hermeneutical approaches

Biography

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.