Making the Long View: The Inventing Adulthoods Dataset

Inventing Adulthoods studied the dynamics of young people's lives in five varied locations in the UK, gathered over a decade of research (1996-2006). The focus of the research has shifted from values, to adulthood, to social capital (socially supportive networks) but a unifying theme has been how much young people take control of their own lives and how the social and material environment in which they grow up shapes the values and identities that they adopt. In the Timescapes study, we maximised the value of this dataset by preparing further cases for archiving and developing longitudinal case histories. Thirty cases have been produced for sharing and re-use.