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Life Patterns

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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.

In 2022, the project is following a new cohort of 17-year-old Australians who will become members of Cohort 3.

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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

2021 – 2026

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

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

Young People Negotiating Risk and Opportunity: A reassessment of transition pathways (DP1094132).
Investigators: Johanna Wyn and Lesley Andres (University of British Columbia)

2005 – 2009

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

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

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.

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

Professor Hernan Cuervo

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 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 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).

Associate Professor Jenny Chesters

Associate Professor, 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

Senior 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 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

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.

Life Patterns is one of the longest running longitudinal studies of young people in Australia.

To participate in the study, follow the three steps below:

  1. Have one of your parent(s)/carer(s) fill their consent form
  2. Fill your consent form
  3. Complete the survey

Note: To participate in the study, you will need to provide a valid personal email address and the School Identifier Code (e.g. ABC01) given to you by your school.

Each participant from an eligible school* will automatically enter a draw have a chance to win a $100 Coles/Myer gift card (one gift card per school). For the duration of the project, gift cards will be distributed every year on a lottery basis for participants who complete the surveys.

*In 2022, this compensation is only available to schools from New South Wales and Tasmania.

How to participate

  1. Parent consent

    Download the detailed information for parents/carers

    Read general information about the study

    Complete the parent/carer consent form

  2. Student consent

    Download the detailed information for students

    Read general information about the study

    Complete the student consent form

  3. Survey

    Complete the survey

More information

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  • Our research publications

  • Education

  • Work

  • Relationships and family

  • Wellbeing

  • Attitudes

  • Books

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  • Research articles

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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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  • Media

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  • Participant reports

    Read the latest participant reports for Cohort 1 and Cohort 2.

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