Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY)

One of the major policy thrusts of Australian governments in recent years has been the creation of flexible pathways between education, training and paid employment. Understanding the transitions between education, training and work is greatly facilitated by longitudinal surveys of cohorts of young people.

The ACER Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project studies the progress of several groups of young Australians as they move from school into post-secondary education and/or work. The oldest group in the project was born in 1961 while the youngest were in Year 9 in 1998.

The information from the surveys is used to provide a 'picture' of what young Australians are doing and how this picture changes as the group gets older, and also compared to other groups when they were the same age.

More detailed investigations look at the links between social characteristics, education and training, and employment. Issues investigated in the LSAY project include school achievement and school completion, participation in vocational and university education and employment.

The LSAY research program is managed jointly by ACER and the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training.

Since the late 1970s major contributions to improving the knowledge base in the area of transitions between education, training and work have resulted from two programs of longitudinal studies. One of these was the ACER program called Youth in Transition and the other was the Australian Youth Survey (and its predecessor the Australian Longitudinal Survey) conducted by DEETYA itself. Research based on those studies has examined the causes and consequences of educational participation among different groups in the Australian population, and how these patterns have changed over time.

From July 1995 the two programs were brought together as the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth. The new project currently has three components:

In addition the new project incorporates an extensive program of analysis and reporting based on data from current and past cohorts.

The consolidation of the previous longitudinal studies and the establishment of successive new cohorts of school-age students provides an even stronger basis for significant contributions in this area. It is planned to publish the results from analysis of particular research questions using these data in journals and reports. In addition it is intended to bring together the results of separate analyses of the data sets in some major publications which integrates the findings from the various data sources.

There have been four cohorts involved in this program: samples of people born in 1961, 1965, 1970 and 1975. All have been contacted nearly annually by mail since their mid-teens. The surveys focus on participation in education and the labour force and on transitions within and between education and work. The last year of contact for the three older cohorts was 1995 but the data continue to be analysed. The youngest cohort is being surveyed as part of a continuing program to collect information for comparison with that already collected for the other three cohorts.

The AYS began in 1989 with a nationally representative sample of more than 5000 young people aged 16-19. This initial sample was augmented annually by the addition of a new group of around 1200 16-year-olds from 1990 to 1994, resulting in an increase in sample size to more than 8000 in 1994. As the AYS program is phased out over the next three years information is being collected through annual telephone interviews. A repository for AYS data and documentation is held at ACER and analysis of the data is continuing.

A nationally representative sample of over 13 000 Year 9 students was selected as the next cohort in the LSAY program. Reading and numeracy tests were administered to students in their schools to provide information on early school achievement for use in later analyses of educational and labour market participation. Students also completed a background questionnaire about their educational and vocational plans and attitudes to school. In 1996 these students provided information in response to a mailed questionnaire. Information was also obtained from their schools about curricula and organisation. In 1997 this cohort was first contacted in the first of the annual telephone surveys. A second Year 9 cohort was selected in 1998. Telephone interviewing of this cohort began in 2000.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department