"Where to next? Post-school transitions and career decisions among young people in Scotland - insights from the Growing Up in Scotland study "

Understanding how young people navigate decisions around post-school transitions requires investigation into the varied sources of career advice young people use, and how advice-seeking behaviours are affected by the mediating role of parents and structural determinants as well as social disadvantage, race, migrant status, gender, health and disability. Using quantitative methods and data from Growing Up in Scotland and the Labour Force Survey, this project examines the context within which young people in Scotland are making decisions about post-school transitions, and the factors that influence these decisions. The context includes the post-pandemic labour market and related challenges such as the current cost-of-living crisis.
This will be the first UK study to use a longitudinal, nationally representative dataset of any UK nation to explore factors influencing young people's post-school transition decisions and aspirations. By using a questionnaire tailored to the Scottish career eco-system, this research will provide an in-depth understanding of how the current formal career services and informal forms of advice are being used by different groups of young people in Scotland.
The doctoral study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the context within which young people in Scotland are currently making decisions about post-school transitions, and the factors that influence these. Gaining a better understanding of the factors that influence career aspirations and decisions of young people will be crucial in designing an equality-focused and person-centred careers service in Scotland that ensures that young people, irrespective of background, gain the skills and qualifications that match the labour market of the future and deliver on the policy ambition of achieving inclusive growth and fair work for all. Understanding the structural and social barriers that certain groups of young people, e.g. those with protected characteristics, face will provide us with insights into how to design an effective career system that offers access to appropriate advice and services particularly to those learners who encounter the greatest barriers and have the least support from informal sources of careers advice to make sure no learner is being left behind.
The proposed research aims to use primarily Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) data to answer the following research questions, which have been tailored to reflect the relevant survey questions in GUS, and the Labour Force Survey:
(1) What sources of careers advice do young people use and which do they find most influential?
(2) What is the relationship between young people's plans and aspirations and the sources they have used for advice?
(3) Are patterns of use of different sources of career advice socially stratified by socio-economic and geographical factors?
(4) What is the relationship between parental and child aspirations for young people's futures?
(5) What is the relationship between parental careers and occupations and young people's career aspirations?
(6) To what extent do young people report changing their career plans due to the Covid pandemic and are changes in plans socially stratified?
(7) What kinds of post-school careers and training do young people in Scotland and the UK go on to do currently, and how have these changed as the nature of the labour market has evolved and become more precarious (e.g. following Brexit, the Covid pandemic, technological advances, the cost of living crisis)?