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

1. The well-being of young Australians: introducing the Our Lives Project Professor Mark Western, Director Institute for Social Science Research The University of Queensland NATSEM Workshop Series: Communities and Child and Youth Wellbeing 5 September 2012, Canberra

2. Objectives • Introduce Our Lives Project • Provide some preliminary results • young people’s confidence in realising social aspirations • Confidence and subjective well-being (life satisfaction)

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. Sample sizes and attrition Wave 1 2006: 12-13 years, 7031 Wave 2 2008: 14-15 years, 3653 (direct contact) Wave 3 2010: 16-17 years, 2378 + 768 wave 2 attriters = 3139 Wave 2 non-reponse – inability to recruit through schools and reliance on direct contact Non-reponse rate not dissimilar from other studies that switch to this contact mode

7. Characteristics of estimation sample (n = 6262)

8. 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.

9. 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 well My life is just right I would like to change many things in my life I wish I had a different kind of life I have a good life I have what I want in life My life is better than most kids (Huebner 1991)

10. 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 education You can get a job that pays well You will have a job you will enjoy doing You will have a happy family life You will have good friends you can count on You will earn the respect of others You will achieve whatever you want in life You will have a rewarding and meaningful life You will have the kind of lifestyle you really want

11. Distributions on Youth well-being measures

12. Correlations of Youth Well-being measures

13. 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

14. 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

15. Confidence in Realising Aspirations: Predictive Margins from Fixed Effects

16. Life Satisfaction: Predictive Margins from Fixed Effects

17. 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