The Young Lives Podcast

Young Lives has just published results from the study’s 7th survey round. Director Marta Favara reflects on this latest data collection, highlights seven key findings, and shares the next steps for this unique longitudinal study. Young Lives, the longest running survey of poverty and inequality ever conducted in the Global South, has evolved over 20 + years, tracking 12,000 children as they have grown up in low -and middle- income countries. Marta Favara discusses innovations introduced in Round 7 to capture the experiences of young adults navigating multiple crises. Delighted to release the results, she talks through seven key findings across three areas: education and learning; health, nutrition and well-being; and work and family lives. Looking ahead she explains what is next for this unique study, including shaping policies in each study country and internationally.

Young Lives Country Director Alula Pankhurst launches the study’s latest wave of qualitative research in Ethiopia, exploring young people’s experiences and resilience through the multiple crises of recent years Young Lives is a mixed methods study. In this latest episode of our podcast series, Alula Pankhurst explains the unique value of combining a quantitative and qualitative approach to both understanding young people’s lives, particularly as they experience multiple crises, and shaping policies to best support them.  He details how this latest wave of Young Lives qualitative research in Ethiopia has been set up, it’s specific focus on aspects of young people’s health and well-being, what he hopes the research will find out, and how the findings will be shared to shape policies.

Researcher Sophie Von Russdorf explains how using audio computer-assisted self-interviews (ACASi), enabled Young Lives to gain a more accurate understanding of the impact of conflict on young people in Ethiopia. It can be very difficult to get an accurate picture of young people’s experiences of conflict. In this first episode of a new podcast series, Research Analyst Sophie von Russdorf talks about Young Lives’ innovative use of audio computer-assisted self-interviews (ACASI) to collect data from young people who have experienced conflict in Ethiopia. In a new paper ‘A Sound Methodology: Measuring the experiences of violent conflict through audio self-interviews’ published in Economics Letters, Sophie, and her co-authors, Marta Favara, Laura Ahlborn, Alessandra Hidalgo-Arestegui and Gerald McQuade found that using ACASI led to more accurate data being collected, whilst at the same time protecting the wellbeing of the young people in Young Lives long running survey.