ADR England Research Community Catalyst: Youth Transitions

This project aims to build a research landscape informed by existing research and evidence gaps in the field of youth transitions. It provides opportunities to address these gaps using administrative data and offers a platform for existing and prospective researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and voluntary and community sector organisations to learn, collaborate and innovate.

Existing data allows us to map young people’s journeys through school, further and higher education, or other institutions (including care or prison), and onto their next steps. However, the quality and accessibility of this data varies, and it is not widely used. In addition, there is no existing cross-sector strategy outlining the requirements for usable datasets or future data linkages.     

This community catalyst aims to map research evidence and data sources, identify potential avenues for better data linking, and create a cross-sector community of data users to answer important research questions. It will drive transformative insights around what works to support youth transitions and reduce inequalities.

The project is co-funded by ADR England, Youth Futures Foundation, and the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO). It is led by the National Foundation for Educational Research, together with their co-investigators at the University of Westminster, University College London, and FFT Datalab.

The project

The Research Community Catalyst: Youth Transitions will conduct a variety of activities over two years:

• Reviewing the current evidence base on youth transitions
• Recording the current state of the data landscape
• Developing a shared research agenda that addresses key gaps
• Establishing a research community
• Building capability for academic research (through a training and resource hub)
• Addressing research priorities (through fellowships) to map young people's pathways through various educational transitions.

Potential of the project

This project aims to build a diverse community with a shared research agenda around youth transitions. Researchers will learn how to address evidence gaps using administrative data sources such as the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset, National Pupil Database, or Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data dataset. Policymakers and practitioners with an interest in data analysis will receive training opportunities, as well as engage with researchers to explore data-driven approaches to tackle complex issues in their sector.

Researchers across the social science and public health disciplines will be interested in this community catalyst, including economists, sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, education researchers, and public health epidemiologists.

This project will address the following objectives:

• Support researchers in using a variety of linked datasets to address important questions about youth transitions
• Enable researchers to better focus on variations in transitions among sub-groups captured in administrative datasets, which are otherwise too small in survey datasets
• Build researchers’ skills and confidence to analyse administrative datasets, via training events, case studies, and a resource hub
• Provide appropriate support for researchers at different stages in their careers and with different skill levels.

Project details

Project lead: Jude Hillary (National Foundation for Educational Research)

Funded value: £ 570,314.05 (full economic cost)

Duration: January 2024 – March 2026

This project is funded by the ADR England budget in support of the ADR England Strategy in consultation with an independent expert panel. This project is part of the ADR England portfolio. Details of the funding grant awarded for this project can also be found on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Gateway to Research.