School Leavers Study, 1978

UKDA study number:4867

Principal Investigator

Pahl, R.E.
University of Kent at Canterbury. Faculty of Social Sciences

Sponsors

Nuffield Foundation
Social Science Research Council

Distributed by

UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester.

June 2012 (2nd Edition)

Bibliographic Citation

All works which use or refer to these materials should acknowledge these sources by means of bibliographic citation. To ensure that such source attributions are captured for bibliographic indexes, citations must appear in footnotes or in the reference section of publications. The bibliographic citation for this data collection is:

Pahl, R.E., School Leavers Study, 1978 [computer file]. 2nd Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], June 2012. SN: 4867.

Acknowledgement

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Any publication, whether printed, electronic or broadcast, based wholly or in part on these materials should carry a statement that the original data creators, depositors or copyright holders, the funders of the Data Collections (if different) and the UK Data Archive bear no responsibility for their further analysis or interpretation.

Copyright:
Professor Ray Pahl

Disclaimer

Although all efforts are made to ensure the quality of the materials, neither the original data creators, depositors or copyright holders, the funders of the Data Collections, nor the UK Data Archive bear any responsibility for the accuracy or comprehensiveness of these materials.

4867 . School Leavers Study, 1978
(School Leavers Study)

Depositor:

Pahl, R.E. , University of Kent at Canterbury. Faculty of Social Sciences

Principal Investigator:

Pahl, R.E. , University of Kent at Canterbury. Faculty of Social Sciences

Sponsors:

Nuffield Foundation
Social Science Research Council

Abstract:

This study is available via the UK Data Service QualiBank, an online tool for browsing, searching and citing the content of selected qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service.

This is a qualitative data collection. The School Leavers Study is a collection of essays written by school children from the Isle of Sheppey in 1978. The essays were collected by Ray Pahl as part of his wider ethnographic study of the Island in which he both conducted directly, and oversaw, several studies which focused on the Isle of Sheppey during the period from 1978 to the mid-1980s. The studies were broadly investigating the changing patterns of work; the division of labour, unemployment, deindustrialisation, and the informal economy. Together, his collections build a complex picture of different aspects of Sheppey life.

This particular data collection consists of 141 essays written by school pupils, at Pahl’s request. He asked teachers in a comprehensive school on the Isle Of Sheppey to set an essay to all those who were in English lessons about ten days before they were due to leave school. The youngsters were asked to imagine that they were nearing the end of their life, and that something made them think back to the time when they left school. They were then asked to write an account of their life over the next 30 or 40 years. The data offers a unique insight into the hopes and aspirations of young people on the island at the time.

The collection was enhanced in 2010 by transcribing the original hand written essays into a digital format and these have been made available in June 2012. The original hand written essays are stored in the Albert Sloman Library Special Collections, University of Essex.

In 2009 Dawn Lyon and Graham Crow revisited this collection. They transcribed, coded and analysed this collection of essays as part of their project Living and Working on Sheppey. They also repeated the data collection with school leavers in 2009/2010, as well as conducting a series of oral history interviews with Sheppey residents in order gain a longitudinal perspective of life on the island. Further information on their project is available on the Living and Working on Sheppey website.

Main Topics:

The main topics cover: school leavers; school - work transition; youth; youth employment; youth unemployment; gender; employment; youth opportunities; working class life; apprenticeships; family; marriage; employers; social attitudes.

Coverage:

Time Period Covered: 1978
Dates of Fieldwork: 1978
Country: England
Geography: Isle of Sheppey; Kent
Spatial Units: No spatial unit
Observation Units: Individuals
Kind of Data: Textual data; Essays

Universe Sampled:

Location of Units of Observation: Subnational
Population: Pupils about to leave a comprehensive school on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent in 1978

Methodology:

Time Dimensions: Cross-sectional (one-time) study
Sampling Procedures: Purposive selection/case studies
Number of Units: 141 school-pupils' essays
Method of Data Collection: Self-completion
Weighting: Not applicable

Language(s) of Written Materials:

Study Description: English
Study Documentation: English

Access:

Access Conditions: The depositor has specified that registration is not required.
Availability: UK Data Service
External note: Please note: This study is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. It is available via the UK Data Service QualiBank, the Service's online tool for browsing, searching and citing the content of selected qualitative data.
Contact: Get in touch

Date of First Release:

02 December 2004

Date of Latest Release:

27 June 2012 ( 2nd Edition )

Copyright:

Professor Ray Pahl

File last updated:

10 March 2015