What is home to young people in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Associate Professor Polly Atatoa Carr

Building on the researcher’s existing programme of research regarding home and the household environment for children and young people, this project will determine how young people describe what home means to them, whether there are other places (other than home) that feel like home, and what makes these places special. This work will complement a Masters student thesis exploring how rangatahi Māori develop a sense of belonging while living in housing deprivation, and what an ideal home would mean to them. It will also complement the researcher’s project focused on children, young people, and the housing system. .

Our Voices – A Māori Analysis

Professor Chris Cunningham

A Māori analysis of the ‘Our Voices’ data will first capture their experience of wellbeing – in their own voices – and compare/contrast with the experiences of other young people in the cohort. The second part of the analysis will be to interpret the voices of young Māori in terms of te ao Māori based on frameworks such as Sir Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Whā. Both parts of this analysis will inform potential service interventions for young people and create a clearer understanding of the resiliency resources they may call upon to support their wellbeing.

What makes school easy or tough for New Zealand Middle Years students?

Ryan Dawson-Bruce, supervised by Associate Professor Elizabeth Peterson

The objective of this project is to understand students’ individual experiences of school, as well as perceptions of their peers’ experiences. This will involve exploring who adolescents perceive as having an easy or tough time at school and the factors that are understood to facilitate (more) positive experiences.

Exploring Adolescents’ Perspectives on Friendships in New Zealand

Jie Fan, supervised by Associate Professor Kane Meissel and Dr Georgia Rudd

This research aims to explore adolescents’ perceptions of good friends and their experiences with friendships. It seeks to provide insights and recommendations for parents, educators, and policymakers to better support adolescents in developing healthy and fulfilling friendships.

Pacific Rangatahi Perspectives of COVID-19

Talisa Gan-Setu, supervised by Dr Sarah Kapeli

This project explores the impact of COVID-19 on young people in New Zealand at individual, school, and societal levels. This will involve understanding how COVID-19 affected pacific rangatahi whanau, their school experiences, and how the young people think it has affected life widely across New Zealand.

Cultural Identity in Youth in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Rosa McGrath, supervised by Dr Sam Manuela

This project aims to understand how youth think about and experience culture in terms of how they conceptualise what culture is, how they describe their own culture, and how they connect to their culture.

What are 14 year-olds’ perceptions of belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Sharon Ogden, supervised by Drs Annaline Flint, Lyn McDonald and Georgia Rudd

This project will examine the perceptions of belonging in 14-year-olds living in Aotearoa New Zealand. This will involve identifying the contexts in which young people feel they below and the factors that promote belonging.

Measuring bias in large language models (LLM) in the New Zealand context

Bo Pang, supervised by Professor Yun Sing Koh

This project aims to construct a dataset that measures bias on LLMs in the New Zealand context and assess the bias of existing LLMs in the New Zealand context. Firstly, we will build and validate a dataset from a New Zealand corpus. Once the dataset has been produced, we will begin research to evaluate the bias of the LLM in the New Zealand context.

Exploring cross-ethnic differences in rangatahi engagement with leisure

Carmen Pang, supervised by Dr Sarah Kapeli

This research project aims to explore the cross-ethnic differences among rangatahi leisure experiences. This will allow us to address the pressing gap in cross-ethnic leisure research, while bringing rangatahi voices to the forefront of leisure experiences.

Multimodal deep learning of unstructured data

Ricky Qiao, supervised by Professors Yun Sing Koh, Chris Cunningham and Dr Caroline Walker

This project aims to construct a dataset that measures bias on LLMs in the New Zealand context and assess the bias of existing LLMs in the New Zealand context. Firstly, we will build and validate a dataset from a New Zealand corpus. Once the dataset has been produced, we will begin research to evaluate the bias of the LLM in the New Zealand context.

“…both a battleground and a serene creek”: Exploring young people’s lived experiences of and with social media in contemporary Aotearoa

Dr Georgia Rudd

This project will capture how young people in contemporary Aotearoa engage with social media, including patterns of use and the motivators for and outcomes of use and non-use of social media. These insights will inform efforts to support young people to engage with social media in ways that are both safe and that make the most of this ever-evolving technology.

Exploring the difficulties associated with attending school

Sarah Simpson, supervised by Associate Professor Elizabeth Peterson

This project will investigate whether youth find it difficult to go to school and what factors contribute to making attending school difficult across individuals with varying levels of difficulty attending school. This will involve exploring how school engagement and motivation has changed over time, and the importance of being engaged and present at school.

Navigating Rough Waters: Understanding Help-Seeking Behaviours among New Zealand Adolescents

Dr Valerie Sotardi

This project will explore adolescent’s help-seeking behaviours in the New Zealand context by identifying key help sources for support and understanding the mechanisms of help-seeking. This involves identifying the range of help sources—such as individuals, groups, or resources (such as family members, friends, educators, online communities, or mental health resources)—that adolescents turn to during tough times as well as how these support systems aid New Zealand adolescents in navigating through tough times.

Longitudinal trajectory modelling of wellbeing indicators and predictors

Dr Caroline Walker

Growing Up in New Zealand is designed to provide an understanding of how children are growing up in New Zealand. The conceptual model incorporates the theory that child development is intergenerational and begins before they are born, and that each life course outcome is the result of the complex interplay between an individual’s biology and the environment they experience across time. As such, information has been collected since before birth and is centred on the child participant. Longitudinal data collected will be used to determine trajectories of development and what influences these. This data is multidisciplinary and is designed to understand dynamic interactions between the child and their environment across a broad range of influences from the immediate family environment to the wider societal context.

Adolescents’ attitudes towards and motivations to attend school

Isabel Williamson, supervised by Associate Professor Elizabeth Peterson

The young people were asked to rate how they feel about school on a 5-point Likert scale, followed by a justification of this response. In addition, the young people were asked about what motivates them to attend school. By analysing these data, this project aims to discover how kids feel about school and what motivates them to attend.

Opportunities for future projects

Given the large-scale nature of the data collected, there are ongoing opportunities to explore and analyse the data in future projects.

Currently we do not have any funded opportunities available, however please contact us if you are interested in using the data in your own research.

THESES
Qiao, R. (2022). Association of Socioeconomic Factors with Childhood Depression from a Perspective of Machine Learning: Supervised Learning and Cluster Analysis. Master of Professional Studies in Data Science, University of Auckland.

Luo, J. (2022). Association of Socioeconomic Status with Childhood Depression in New Zealand. Master of Professional Studies in Data Science, University of Auckland.

Zhang, X. (2023). Sentiment Analysis and Topic Modelling of Open-ended Questions about Children’s Life during Lockdown. Master of Professional Studies in Data Science, University of Auckland.

CONFERENCES
Morton, S. (2023, July 20). Co-design with adolescents to create innovative digital tools to enhance longitudinal data collection. European Survey Research Association, Milan. 

Dobbie, G. (2023, December 12). Machine Learning for Social Good in Aotearoa New Zealand. Australasian Conference on Data Science and Machine Learning, Auckland. 

Meissel, K., Morton, S. (2024, March 5). Insights from co-design with adolescents to create innovative data collection and analytic tools. INTED2024 Proceedings (p. 6574). International Technology, Education and Development, Valencia.

Walker, C. (2024, September 1). Genetic association analysis for depression symptoms in a diverse cohort of New Zealand young people. Queenstown Research Week Mental Health Satellite, Queenstown.

Morton, S. (2024, September 25). Tō Mātou Rerenga – Our Journey Digital Platform – A New Way to Engage with Young People. 2024 SLLS Conference Abstract Book, p. 81). Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies, Colchester.

Walker, C. (2024, September 25). Multi-Modal Machine Learning to Enable High Throughput Qualitative Analysis of Wellbeing Information – Tō Mātou Rerenga – Our Journey. 2024 SLLS Conference Abstract Book, p. 81). Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies, Colchester.

Rudd, G. (2024, September 25). Young Peoples’ Understandings and Experiences of Wellbeing: Capturing Their Voices Using Thematic Analysis. 2024 SLLS Conference Abstract Book, p. 82). Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies, Colchester.

Meissel, K. (2024, September 25). Going Digital: Methodological Reflections and Considerations. 2024 SLLS Conference Abstract Book, p. 82). Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies, Colchester.