Young People in Education and Employment: The Data Trail

The use of existing data for education research activities can be a useful resource. Improvement in statistical analysis and data management and retrieval techniques, as well as access to government data bases has expanded opportunities for researchers seeking to investigate issues that are institutional in nature, such as participation patterns for young people transitioning from school to employment or training. Existing data may be used for descriptive research, correlation, cross-sectional or causal-comparative designs. Government institutions gather considerable amounts of data that could be mined by researchers; however, the way that data is compiled and differences between data bases is a difficulty to address. This study reports on a descriptive research study undertaken using three existing government databases and provides some guidelines for researchers to consider.