This piece of research by Jones and Rugg is some ways helpful to me because it shows that house prices are affecting young people and their employment. On the other hand, it doesn’t relate to my question in the sense that it doesn’t go into detail about young people’s actual career choices. I want to know how house prices affect their career choices, not just where they actually live. It also is based on the countryside and in my opinion this is not a broad enough representation on young people with the UK. I want to research into young British adults and want a wide-ranging sample.
Another study I looked at was from a John Ermisch journal. The study was called “Research centre on micro-social change. Prices, parents, and young people’s household formation.” Ermisch used panel data from the first half of the 1990’s. This is qualitative data but the research uses qualitative data too through interviews with young adults from 16 and above. This quote describes a sort of conclusion on findings that he had found; “It describes the patterns of departure from and returns to the parental home, and it estimates the impacts of regional housing market circumstances and of characteristics of young person and his/her on these processes.” Ermisch concentrates on the actual ‘formation’ of a household. He found that one of the main reasons for young people living in their parent’s home was the high house prices. This research was more difficult to relate to my question because it was based around quantitative and qualitative data. It was based around questionnaires and interviews. In 1991, representative samples of 5,500 households containing 10,000 people were interviewed. The same individuals are interviewed every year and therefore this study could be seen as a longitudinal study.
The two studies that I have looked at both (in some way) relate to my research proposal because they use qualitative data and because they look at household prices, young people and household formation. I have got a good grasp of the methods used in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation research, using the electoral register was a good way to gather a sample for that particular research, in my opinion. The second piece of research that I looked at was more focused on patterns and correlations. This piece of research was a good in the sense that it gave defiant answers to the research question; it had tables and graphs (quantitative data) in the conclusion showing the outcome of the research. On the other hand though, it goes into triangulation with using more than one method. Qualitative data with interviews and quantitative data with questionnaires.
I want to do is an interview. The reason why I have chosen this is because I want to collect qualitative data and get the verstehen of my interviewees in in-depth information. To get my sample of young British people I will pick different university’s and see if I can get a list of postgraduates from the past few years and systematically then pick different adults from the list. I will be getting a sample of around a 500 young adults and then try and get in touch with them to see if they are willing to take part in my study. The problem with this is that I would have to see whether I would be allowed to have access to past student details. The way I could get round this though is to see if the university itself is allowed to get in touch with the individuals about the study and see if they are willing to participate. My sample may be small as it is only a 500 people but this is because realistically I wouldn’t have the money to be able to conduct a large scale survey.
I will be doing an unstructured interview. Again, because of the qualitative data I want to collect. I can also explain questions that some of the interviewees don’t understand fully. When I have gathered my sample, I can send out interviewers to conduct the interview. The first thing I will do is to make sure that the interviewees know the purpose of the research because this will hopefully make the interviewees more comfortable and they will feel my research has some kind of purpose that they are part of.
I will need to operationalise some concepts within my research. One being ‘young British adults’. Within my research I will be interviewing people between the ages of 23-29 and this is because I am planning on getting my sample from graduates from university and people tend to graduate from 23 onwards. Also, ‘British adults’ in my research is going to basically be people who went to university in the UK and are still living in the UK.
I want to see if there is a relationship between rising house prices and young adult’s career choices. Therefore, I will be asking questions like; Are you living at home with their parents? Do you own your own house? What factors have caused you not to buy a house? Are you doing the job you wanted to do in the profession you wanted to specialise in? Has living in a particular situation affected the job you are currently in? do you think house prices are too high for young people? Do you think there is anything that can be done about high house prices? E.g. government intervention.
The reason why I am asking questions like I have is because I want to build up a view of whether house prices are affecting what job the young person is in. I have also asked whether they think anything can be done about house prices, this is because I wanted my research to have some kind of purpose and try and see some kind of change or solution to the problems for young people that have been to university.
The advantages of doing an interview are that I can explain questions, I can build a rapport with interviewees and typically I will get a higher response rate with my interviewing method. On the other hand though, there are some disadvantages.
Firstly, interviewers may affect the answers with a bias view that is brought out in the questions. Interviews are generally more expensive and the look of the interviewer can affect how the interviewee feels. For example, women may find it easier to open up and be more truthful if they are interviewed by another woman. I can tackle these problems by firstly making sure that interviewers go in with a non bias view and make sure they follow certain guidelines so they do not affect my research. Secondly, I can try and stick to a certain budget and thirdly I can try match interviewers with interviewees. For example, try and get women to interview women and men interview men.
When I have gathered my data, I will analyse my data and see if there is a relationship between young adult’s career choices and house prices. If not, I will see if there is another factor that affects young adult’s career choices. E.G. class, gender or ethnicity.
In conclusion, my research is difficult because there is no other research exactly like mine and therefore I cannot immediately see the ‘flaws’ of my research and try to fix them. But on the other hand, this could be a strength for my proposal because It has never been done before. I would like to have been able to expand my work to a variety of different types of young people. For example, young people that haven’t been to university. Young people from the age of 16 etc. This is because people who go to university tend to be of a middle class and my research may not be representative of the UK otherwise. My results would probably be different as well because they have probably made different career choices for different reasons other than house prices. Also, I think my research proposal would be good for becoming a longitudinal study because there may be a difference in results the older the people get. Career choices may change the older the individual gets.
Bibliography:
Ermisch, J. (1986) Prices, parents and young people’s household formation. Journal of Research centre on micro-social change. Pages 1-18.
Fulcher J. and Scott J. (2003) Sociology, 2nd Editions, Oxford University.
Internet sources:
Joseph Rowntree foundation
