Insights From Longitudinal Research

Abstract

This chapter concludes the section Insights from youth longitudinal research, highlighting some key points made by the three chapters presented there. Each draws on a research program that spans the life journeys of young people from the 1990s to the 2000s, presenting findings from the Life Patterns longitudinal research program in Australia (Maire and Chesters); the Life Paths of a Generation study in Estonia (Saar, Nimmerfeldt and Kazjulja); and the Grammars of Youth research program in Argentina (Miranda and Arancibia). Life Patterns is a mixed-method longitudinal multi-cohort research program that documents the lives of three cohorts of Australians who left secondary school in 1991, 2005–6 and 2023–4. Life Paths of a Generation, which tracks the trajectories of young Estonians who left secondary school in 1983, also employs both survey and interview tools to develop insights into the significance of the social, political and economic transformations in Estonia that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Similarly, the Grammars of youth research program in Argentina, initiated in the late 1990s, tracks the trajectories of high school graduates after the implementation of neoliberal economic policies through surveys, and subsequently through interviews with a sub-sample.