ABOUT
Our Voices is an innovative project that has developed new ways of collecting longitudinal information as well as new approaches to analysing information from young people so we can get a fuller picture of what shapes their wellbeing.
Our Voices is an innovative project funded by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment through a five-year Endeavour Fund grant. The project has developed new ways of collecting longitudinal information as well as new approaches to analysing information from young people so we can get a fuller picture of what shapes their wellbeing.
BACKGROUND
The Our Voices project was established by Professor Susan Morton at the University of Auckland in 2019, involving a multidisciplinary team of national and international experts.
The collaborative research programme was designed to utilise innovative research methods and policy partnerships to facilitate closing the wellbeing gap within a generation. The programme leveraged prior investment by building on the extensive information collected from the cohort of children and families participating in the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study.
OBJECTIVES
One of the key aims is to provide an integrated data resource that is explicitly wellbeing focused, child-centric and strengths based with a te ao Māori lens to improve measurement and management of child and youth wellbeing.
Hearing and responding to the voices of the most vulnerable will mean that wellbeing can be enhanced for all, including the vulnerable, so society will benefit as a result.
Context relevant knowledge will lead to improved delivery of public services, ensuring they are appropriately designed to target and support those individuals in the population with the greatest need, addressing the persistent gap between real need and current service access.
The voices of our young people can inform what fosters resilience in the face of exposure to adversity, moving beyond simply measuring deficit-based risk factors. By working with them to create a safe and open platform for them to share their stories and have their say, their collective digital “voices” will tell us what wellbeing means to them and provide insights into what is acting either as a barrier or enabler for their engagement with current and potential future services.
Qualitative information on this scale has not been captured in any comparable research study to date. This research will enable longitudinal studies in New Zealand and internationally to address shared challenges in an era of increasing digital connectivity, and to process such data in a timely way so as to have increased societal impact.