Research Projects

Research within the Finnish Youth Research Network consists of projects of various scope and duration, with around 20–30 researchers involved in these projects annually. The research activities are organised into focus areas that represent the themes and goals of the research projects and reflect the key perspectives of the Finnish Youth Research Network’s high-level scientific research and social responsibility.

Focus areas of research activities

Three of the focus areas are thematic and one is defined on more organisational-focused principles. The regular data collection activities form a permanent area of the Finnish Youth Research Network producing quantitative and qualitative monitoring data on young people.

Generational relations, life course and transitions

This field of knowledge is based on the multidimensional examination of intergenerational relationships, life courses and transitions. Generations are studied in various environments and contexts that involve negotiations concerning conceptions of a good life as well as material circumstances and conditions. The generational perspective pays attention not only to youth generations, but also to questions of family and intergenerationalism and to transitions and tensions between childhood, youth and adulthood during a life course. Life courses and transitions are interpreted from the perspectives of personal experiences and social and institutional processes.

The perspective of life courses also means that the approaches of follow-up and longitudinal studies are more strongly integrated into the production of information within the Finnish Youth Research Network. This serves to ensure that the life courses of young people and interruptions in the course of everyday life can be identified more extensively.

Research activities

• Ten generations of youth, three centuries: The history of generations of Finnish youth (2015–2022)

  Researchers: Mikko Salasuo

• Young parents, parental leave and gender equality (YOPA, 2021)

  Researchers: Jenni Lahtinen

• Youth Cultures and Wellbeing (2017–2022)

  Researchers: Mikko Salasuo

Democracy, equality, inequality

This field of knowledge examines issues related to democracy, equality and inequality. The research topics in this field concern social structures in the lives of young people, such as the areas of ethnicity, sexuality, family and politics, as well as social action, such as influencing in society and life in families and other close relationships. The domains of knowledge in this field mainly concern the institutional relationships and practices of young people. The research projects are interlinked by theoretical concepts: citizenship, social exclusion, discrimination, structure and human agency, embodiment, and resistance and deviance. This field of knowledge is characterised by complicated special issues related to research ethics with regard to sensitive topics.

Research activities

• Inmates with foreign backgrounds in Finnish prisons – ethnographic research on equality, unofficial hierarchies and coping strategies (2015-2021)

  Researchers: Helena Huhta

• Promoting gender and culture sensitive career guidance (Potential, 2019–2021)

  Researchers: Tommi Hoikkala, Jenni Lahtinen

• Situation picture and instruments of monitoring – Democracy and human rights education, participation rights and equality at field of education (2022–2023)

  Researchers: Anu Gretschel, Kai Tarvainen

• Surviving precarious work conditions: work ethos an worker subjectivity in restaurant work (2021–2023)

  Researchers: Lotta Haikkola, Kai Tarvainen

• The State of Democracy and Human Rights Education (2021)

  Researchers: Anu Gretschel

Youth work, youth activities, services for young people

This field of knowledge focuses on operational environments and services for young people and the underlying structural conditions. It examines the nature of services and their position in the field of youth policy as well as their significance for young people at the level of individuals, groups and communities. Special attention is paid to the status of young people and to their citizenship and participation opportunities, as well as to conditions for their human agency in independent activities and activities targeted at young people. More broadly, this field of knowledge concerns interaction between young people and society and the manifestations of this interaction in the lives of young people. The goal is to call attention to young people’s experiences and the need to adjust the starting points for youth work and policy so as to make them more relevant and meaningful to young people.

The methods in this field of knowledge range from traditional data collection approaches to developmental research and action research. Studies in this field often involve dialogue with various fields of youth work and policy.

Research activities

• Communal perspectives on disturbances in school (2019–2022)

  Researchers: Tomi Kiilakoski

• Evaluation and monitoring of the activities of youth organisations in the Nordics - what can be learned from the Nordic countries? (Research module, 2021–2022)

  Researchers: Anu Gretschel, Kai Tarvainen

• Sustainable wellbeing for youth in East Helsinki – Break the Fight! Opportunity to be heard - monitoring and evaluation of the #BTFEastHelsinki project (2018–2021)

  Researchers: Sofia Laine, Susanna Jurvanen

• Taking the multifaceted evaluation tool into use developed for open youth work (2018–2021)

  Researchers: Anu Gretschel

Regular data collection

The Finnish Youth Research Network’s regular data collection is made up of four areas that meet the needs for quantitative and qualitative current data on young people. Instruments for collecting quantitative data are the Youth Barometer that is produced annually and A Study of Children’s and Young People’s Leisure Activities and the Youth Living Conditions Yearbook that are published in alternate years. Alongside the quantitative data collection instruments, the modelling of a qualitative longitudinal study is in progress in the Youth in time research project (2014–2025).

Research activities

• A Study of Children's and Young People's Leisure Activities

  Researchers: Mikko Salasuo, Sami Myllyniemi

• Youth Barometer

  Researchers: Sami Myllyniemi, Lotta Haikkola

• Youth Living Conditions Yearbook

  Researchers: Lotta Haikkola

• Youth Wiki (continuous)

  Researchers: Anu Gretschel

• Youth in time - qualitative longitudinal study on young people (2014-2025)

  Researchers: Sinikka Aapola-Kari, Tomi Kiilakoski, Jenni Lahtinen, Antti Kivijärvi