CRICOS Provider No 00025B The well-being of young Australians: introducing the Our Lives Project Professor Mark Western, Director Institute for Social.

CRICOS Provider No 00025B

The well-being of young Australians: introducing the Our Lives Project

Professor Mark Western, DirectorInstitute for Social Science Research

The University of Queensland

NATSEM Workshop Series: Communities and Child and Youth Wellbeing

5 September 2012, Canberra


Objectives

• Introduce Our Lives Project• Provide some preliminary results

– young people’s confidence in realising social aspirations

– Confidence and subjective well-being (life satisfaction)


The Our Lives Project

• aspirations, interests, behaviours of young people• pathways through high school and beyond• CIs: Zlatko Skrbis (UQ), Mark Western (UQ), Bruce

Tranter (UTas), David Hogan (NIE, Singapore)• Skrbis, Western et al. 2012. Expecting the

unexpected: Young people’s expectations about marriage and family. Journal of Sociology.

• www.uq.edu.au/ourlives• Funded by ARC (DP0557667, DP0878781)

http://www.uq.edu.au/ourlives


Theoretical and Substantive Motivation

• Deinstitutionalisation – declining significance of social structures, institutions for attitudes, behaviour, distributional outcomes (Bell 1976; Sennett 1998; McDonald 1996; Pakulski and Waters 1998; DeWilde 2003)

• Reflexivity – self as ongoing project; self-monitoring, re-organisation (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991; Castells 1996; Bauman 2001)

• Implications – New choices/opportunities, hyper differentiation, individualisation, liberation from structure + uncertainty/ontological insecurity

• Problem – limited empirical scrutiny


Objectives and Organisation

• Longitudinal study of Queensland young people• Surveyed 2006 (12-13 years, year 8), 2008, 2010• Online and hardcopy self-completion questionnaires• Administered through schools 2006, and by email/mail,

waves 2 & 3• Aspirations, expectations (education, work, family formation),

interests, IT use, social networks, social participation, trust in people/institutions, environmental attitudes

• Long and short form questionnaires in 2010 to recover those attrited wave 2

• Qualitative interviews at each wave


Sample sizes and attrition

Wave 1 2006: 12-13 years, 7031Wave 2 2008: 14-15 years, 3653 (direct contact)Wave 3 2010: 16-17 years, 2378 + 768 wave 2

attriters = 3139Wave 2 non-reponse – inability to recruit

through schools and reliance on direct contactNon-reponse rate not dissimilar from other

studies that switch to this contact mode

Socio demographic characteristic Proportion Socio demographic characteristic Proportion Female 0.50 Father’s social class Living with both parents 0.69 Employer 0.12 Mother’s highest education Own account worker 0.08 Less than year 12 0.09 Professional and managerial 0.14 Year 12 0.06 Manager, non-professional 0.17 Trade 0.11 Professional 0.02 Degree or higher 0.24 Non-managerial professional 0.19 Don’t know 0.21 Unemployed or NILF 0.18 Missing 0.29 Missing 0.10 Father’s highest education Number of books in home Less than year 12 0.07 0-25 0.16 Year 12 0.03 25-100 0.25 Trade 0.20 101-200 0.24 Degree or higher 0.20 201-300 0.16 Don’t know 0.25 > 300 0.19 Missing 0.26 School sector Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 0.04 Government 0.64 Language spoken at home Catholic 0.21 English 0.84 Independent 0.15 Other 0.08 Lives in household without

employed adult 0.10

Missing 0.07 Remoteness Mother’s social class Major city 0.53 Employer 0.04 Inner regional 0.26 Own account worker 0.04 Outer regional 0.16 Professional and managerial 0.12 Remote 0.05 Manager, non-professional 0.11 Professional 0.05 Non-managerial professional 0.24 Unemployed or NILF 0.34 Missing 0.07

Characteristics of estimation sample (n = 6262)


Youth Well-being Measures

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine 2002 Framework “Community Programs to Promote Youth Development”

• Psychological and emotional development– Positive mental health: Life satisfaction (0.84)– Confidence and personal efficacy: Confidence in realising social aspirations (0.89)– Coherent and positive identity: Identity Integration (0.73)– Positive self regard: Self-reported intelligence (0.88)– Positive achievement motivation: Achievement motivation (0.84)

• Intellectual development– School success: Self-reported achievement (0.77)

• Social development– Connectedness: Confidence in family (0.55)– Connectedness: Confidence in friends (0.78)

• Stressful life events

• Measurement Model – χ2 (674) = 14655.3, p < 0.001. RMSEA = 0.06.


Life satisfaction

To what extent do you agree or disagree with following?

Strongly disagree, Mildly disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Mildly agree, Strongly agree.

My life is going wellMy life is just rightI would like to change many things in my lifeI wish I had a different kind of lifeI have a good lifeI have what I want in lifeMy life is better than most kids

(Huebner 1991)


Confidence in realising social aspirations

Confidence in realising social aspirations

How confident are you that you ... ? Very confident, Confident, Somewhat confident, Not very confident, Not at all confident.

You can get a good educationYou can get a job that pays wellYou will have a job you will enjoy doingYou will have a happy family lifeYou will have good friends you can count onYou will earn the respect of othersYou will achieve whatever you want in lifeYou will have a rewarding and meaningful lifeYou will have the kind of lifestyle you really want

Distributions on Youth well-being measures0

.2.4

.6.8

De

nsity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Satisfaction with life

0.2

.4.6

.8D

ens

ity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Confidence in aspirations

0.2

.4.6

.8D

ens

ity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Identity integration

01

23

De

nsity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00Achievement motivation

0.1

.2.3

De

nsity

0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00 10.00Perceived intelligence

0.5

11

.52

De

nsity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Perceived school achievement

0.5

11

.52

2.5

De

nsity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Confidence in family

0.5

11

.52

2.5

De

nsity

1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00Confidence in friends

0.2

.4.6

De

nsity

0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00Life events


Life satisfaction Confidence Identity Motivation IntelligenceAchievement Family Friends Stress

Life satisfaction 1Confidence 0.37 1Identity 0.21 0.43 1Motivation 0.26 0.25 0.20 1Intelligence 0.25 0.25 0.19 0.39 1Achievement 0.31 0.26 0.17 0.45 0.66 1Family 0.38 0.30 0.22 0.21 0.16 0.20 1Friends 0.25 0.32 0.21 0.09 0.08 0.12 0.33 1Stress -0.34 -0.11 -0.01 -0.24 -0.24 -0.29 -0.18 -0.09 1

Correlations of Youth Well-being measures


Confidence in aspirations and Life Satisfaction

• Aspirations linked to positive outcomes & mediate soc. background

• Sociology: cognitive content (education & occupation)

• Psychology: affective content (e.g. hope, optimism, confidence)

• Affective content accords with reflexivity, choice, opportunity


Analytic strategy

• Confidence = f (social background, youth wellbeing, school characteristics)

• Life satisfaction = f (social background, youth wellbeing, school characteristics, confidence)

• Wave 1 data has school clustering but within school correlations weak.

• ICC Confidence = 0.01, ICC Life satisfaction = 0.023• Use simple linear mixed models with random

intercepts at school level

Confidence in Realising Aspirations: Predictive Margins from Fixed Effects

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

0 1Female

Margins: Female

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

< 12 12 trd deg DK missMother's education

Margins: Mother's education

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

< 12 12 trd deg DK missFather's education

Margins: Father's education

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

0 1Aboriginal/TSI

Margins: Aboriginal/TSI

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

English speaking NESB MissingMain language

Margins: Main language

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

em oa pm man pr wrknowrkmisMother's class

Margins: Mother's class

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

em oa pm man pr wrknowrkmisFather's class

Margins: Father's class

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

0 1Living with both parents

Margins: Living with both parents

3.8

4.2

4.6

5

maj city inn reg out reg remoteRegion Code

Margins: Region Code

Life Satisfaction: Predictive Margins from Fixed Effects

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

0 1Female

Margins: Female

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

< 12 12 trd deg DK missMother's education

Margins: Mother's education

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

< 12 12 trd deg DK missFather's education

Margins: Father's education

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

0 1Aboriginal/TSI

Margins: Aboriginal/TSI

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

English speaking NESB MissingMain language

Margins: Main language

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

em oa pm man pr wrknowrkmisMother's class

Margins: Mother's class

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

em oa pm man pr wrknowrkmisFather's class

Margins: Father's class

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

0 1Living with both parents

Margins: Living with both parents

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

maj city inn reg out reg remoteRegion Code

Margins: Region Code


Conclusions

• Our Lives participants report relatively high levels of wellbeing on measures life satisfaction, emotional and psych. devt, intellectual devt, social devt.

• Different wellbeing indicators correlated• Less variation by social background in confidence in realising social

aspirations than life satisfaction• Although participants report high levels of life satisfaction overall, this

varies with parental education, ATSI status, parental class and family status• Little regional variation • With address data, opportunity to explore spatial variation,

“neighbourhood effects” in more detail• Longitudinal results may vary as children move through adolescence to

young adulthood


CRICOS Provider No 00025B The well-being of young Australians: introducing the Our Lives Project Professor Mark Western, Director Institute for Social.

Documents

wave slide

cricos provider

social aspirations confidence

b youth

b objectives

dp0878781 slide

canberra slide

social participation