Youth Transitions
Goodwin and O’Connor are experts in the field of ‘youth transitions’ and, with Sarah Hadfield worked on the largest re-analysis research project underway; the re-analysis of two classical studies of youth transitions from education into work.
The reanalysis of the original datasets is possible thanks to the donation of the original questionnaire data by Professors David Ashton and Ken Roberts. ‘Young Adults in the Labour Market’ lead by Professor David Ashton researches the youth labour markets of Leicester, St Albans and Sunderland. Professor Ken Robert’s research explores the youth labour market of Liverpool, Walsall and Chelmsford.
The original projects were funded by the Department of Employment, and the data were collected between 1982 and 1985. Although independent of each other, both studies have considerable overlap in themes and in the questions interviewers asked young people. Together, they provide an incredibly rich insight into young people’s attitudes to employment, employment agencies, and government training schemes, and even their social lives during periods of employment and unemployment.
Whether in the popular press or in private discussion youth unemployment and the 1980s are referred to, however, madeinleicester.com’s exclusive access to the original datasets allows for an empirically based re-study into this area.
The original data was used as part of a collaborative project with the late Andy Furlong, of the University of Glasgow.
From Young to Old Workers
Rated ‘Outstanding’ by the ESRC, From Young Workers to Old Workers has already demonstrated the importance of re-examining ‘historical’ data. Since 2000, and the discovery of the original data-sets from Norbert Elias’s 1962-1964 study, Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles , a detailed re-study of the data has been done .
This work has been ongoing and continues to yield significant insights into data reanalysis, research methods, young workers, and Leicester’s youth labour market. This re-study embodies what is unique and exciting about the re-studies research general. The ability to trace some of the original respondents provided unique insights into the employment experiences of young Leicester workers throughout their lives.
Returning to Winston Parva
Focusing on a small yet significant geographical area of South Wigston, Leicester, ‘Returning to Winston Parva’ is the re-study of Norbet Elias and Scotson’s classic sociological text The Established and The Outsiders (1965). In this book Elias and Scotson developed the theory of established and outsider relations, illuminating how groups living within the same community had differential access to ‘power’ and different group identification as a consequence of the development of that community.
The book gives a detailed account of the community, community social groups , relationships and what young people did in their spare time. The original research included details of housing, names of community groups, including church social groups and well known community figures.
This re-study’s aim is to determine whether the established/outsider relationships described by Elias and Scotson still exist within the three districts of Winston Parva, and to consider whether variations in the social conditions within these different districts continue to impact upon young people’s transitions from education to work..
The Employment of Married Women in a Leicester Factory.
‘The Employment of Married Women in a Leicester Hosiery Factory’, research project (1959-1961) was funded by the Department for Scientific and Industrial Research . The original fieldwork took place in the N. Corah & Sons St Margaret’s Factory in Leicester. This study was a replication of Jephcott et al.’s study of the Peek Frean Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey (see Jephcott , P. et al. (1962) Married Women Working, London: Allen and Unwin). The overall aim is to replicate this study with a contemporary group of women workers in Leicester and to trace some of those women who worked for N. Corah and Sons between 1959-1961 – and who may have participated in the original research.
Times of One’s Own.
Times of One’s Own was a research project conducted by Pearl Jephcott in the 1960s with the University of Glasgow. The study researched how the Scottish youth spent their spare time. John Goodwin and Henrietta O’Connor are also currently working with colleagues at the University of Glasgow Archive on a retrospective of Pearl Jephcott’s life and work with research initially focusing on a reanalysis of the visual images used in Jephcott’s Glasgow studies.
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