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Scene from UK documentary series Up, which
inspired the Australian research. Photo: supplied
Generation Z up next
The study documenting
the fears and aspirations
of young Australians.
Zlatko Skrbis interviewed by Wade Zaglas
P
rofessor Zlatko Skrbis, deputy
vice-chancellor (education and
innovation) and professor of
sociology at Australian Catholic University,
is the chief principal investigator of an
Australian Research Council-funded
social futures project entitled, Our Lives.
With the support of various experts and
research assistants, the project aims to
investigate the challenges and milestones
of young Australians as they transition from
adolescence to adulthood.
Beginning in 2006 and inspired partly
by the British documentary series Up, the
longitudinal project tracks the shifting
opinions of over 2000 Queenslanders on
salient issues including job security, early
partnering, home ownership, wellbeing and
agency, social and environmental attitudes,
and approaches to new technology.
The cohort was only 12–13 years of age
when first surveyed; now they are in their
mid-20s.
20
One of the most interesting and perhaps
alarming findings stemming from the Our
Lives project is that young adults have a
less certain idea of their life trajectories, and
mental health issues are on the rise. These
could have serious policy implications for
the future.
Campus Review spoke with Skrbis to find
out more about the project and its findings.
CR: What was the aim of your study, and is it
the only one of its type in Australia?
The purpose of this research is to
investigate the significant challenges and
milestones in the lives of young Australians.
We recruited fundamentally from a
younger population across Queensland.
What we wanted to understand is how they
navigate adulthood in a context of pervasive
social, political and economic uncertainty.
So, for 14 years we have studied this
single-age cohort of young people. We
wanted to understand their educational,
occupational and geographic mobility;
their early experiences and expectations
of partnering and parenthood; and things
like family origin and the impact on those
schooling transitions, and the impact
of those transitions on their wellbeing
and agency.
We looked at their social, political
and environmental attitudes and their
engagement with new technologies.
This has provided us with a platform to
do a range of interesting interrogations into
these very specific fields.
We focused on two major areas. First, we
wanted to track young adults’ experiences:
all life events and processes such as tertiary
graduation, finding employment, long-term
partnering, becoming a parent and so on.
Secondly, we wanted to identify factors
that enabled positive career relationship and
housing outcomes, as well as those factors
that in many ways heightened the risks of
labour market marginalisation: tertiary non-
completion, residential and relationship
instability, and so on.
Fundamentally, we also wanted to
understand how we could inform policies
that support these young people’s
wellbeing and social participation.
Now let me just go back to the question
that you posed: “Is this the only study?”
No, it is not. There is another study that is
to some extent similar in Australia, and it’s
called the Longitudinal Survey of Australian
Youth (LSAY). That one monitors work and
study transitions from ages 16 to 26. Our
project complements LSAY in several ways.
First, we measure key influences and
aspirations from an earlier age, because
we started our conversation with our
respondents when they were 12 or 13 years
of age, and now we continue it into their
late 20s – so, well beyond where LSAY
is going. Now, it is really interesting and
important to understand career pathways
and transitions.
Secondly, LSAY focuses on work and
study. We do that as well, but we also look
at how these areas link to other domains:
relationships, family, wellbeing and so
on. And finally, whereas LSAY is mostly
theoretical, our work examines some major
claims about social change and young
adulthood. There’s a lot of exciting and
interesting theoretical research in Australia
and beyond that we are trying to enter into
dialogue with. And there are some fantastic
scholars that have done so much to shape
these domains of intellectual activity, such
as Johanna Wing, Dan Woodman and
others. We are quite unique, but we also
acknowledge similarities where they exist
and where that is appropriate.
What motivated you to embark on such
an ambitious study such as this, and do
you intend to attract this cohort later into
their lives?
The idea for this project came as a result of
watching a famous British documentary –
the Up series by Michael Apted. This is how
the idea for this research came up. Then I
partnered with a really good colleague of
mine from the University of Queensland,
Professor Mark Western and a number of