Unemployment Is Becoming a Big Issue in the UK - Research Paper Example

Researching with Children & Young People Introduction Unemployment is becoming a big issue, especially now that the unemployment numbers in UK have reached a record high. However, younger people are affected by this issue even more than the older people. Those in the age between 16 and 25 years old are affected by this issue more than any other age group of employment age. The main issue with this age group is that they do not have experience, yet, most jobs require experience in order for one to get the position. Strategies such as work placements, apprenticeship and internships are used as a way to give these people a job experience before they join the job market in full force (Great Britain House of Commons Children, 2010). This has been used a lot in the UK, but there is a need to identify how these young people feel about job placement or internships. Literature review According to Furlong (2009), the main challenge that these young people face in their bout to get employment is insufficient support to find jobs. The use of job placement for college students so that they gain experience in the industry they are learning about can be used to solve this issue. The job market is extremely challenging thus denying young people opportunities to develop (Brain, 2010). According to Reid and Cominetti (2010), young people have positive attitudes and experiences of in-work training that they have acquired through job placements. However, according to Beg (2012), they are not always clear how such training and skills can lead into meaningful employment for them. This means that although they appreciate and are willing to participate in these job placements and internships, they find it hard for these job placements to be a tool to help them get the job they are looking for after they graduate from college (Lodovici & Semenza, 2012). For instance, according to Evans and Shen (2010) 78% of young people who had been involved in in-work training found the training they had gotten in work to be relevant to their job. At the same time, 67% said that they believed that job placements allowed them to have the skills necessary to do their job better. The same study identified that 41% of those young people who were involved in a job placement felt that the training they got from these job placements made them want to get a permanent employment with their employer (Evans & Shen (2010) According tot a study done by Melvin (2010), it was identified that young people felt hat schools and education providers should give more opportunities to access work experience. More so, the same young people who were studied identified that these institutions should also give stronger career advice and guidance. Government support through policies was also cited as a necessity to help the young people to transform from their education environment to the work environment (John & Henry, 2007). This should be done through schemes and government policies that make it easier for students to gain the right job experience before they leave full time education. This as Melvin (2010) says is a challenge because there has been an increased decline in average investment both by government and the private sector to increase and improve in-work training. This is especially more for young people especially those less than 25 years old. This as Furlong and Guidikova (2001) say, is a trend that was there even before the current economic recession and before the current numbers of unemployment rose to the current figures. According to their study, older young people, such as those between above 35 years old are more likely to get a meaning internship to relationship than the young people of age below 25. As a result, as Jasiukaityte̊ and Furlong (2003) identify, these people feel ignored and felt that both the private sector and the government is not doing enough to help them to come out of the experience trap. In the UK, since 2002 the percentage of young people of age 16 and 25 who have received in-work training or job placements fell from 25% to below 20% (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997). Yet, in the same period of time the number of older people such as those from age 25 and 30 who have received such in-work training or job placements has improved. This shows that the young people continue to be ignored and that they continue to face even harder times with regard to getting a job, as they continue being trapped in the experience trap (Esping & Regini, 2000). According to a study done by Forsyth and Furlong (2000), a majority of the young respondents (age between 16 and 25) had already gained some work experience program and most of them expressed their support for such strategies to help them gain experience. Of these, 84% said that the job placement and in-work training had been useful for their career developed while 83% said that it had helped to increase their confidence with regard to looking for and getting a job. The same study showed that 81% of young people who were involved in the job placements programs believed that the program helped them to gain new skills (Melvin, 2013). According to Bynner and Chisholm (1997) many young people believe in the importance of undertaking work experience in the course of seeking permanent employment. Of all the respondents, 90% said it was either important or very important in their bid to join the labor market. Most of these identified job placements as a critical path to their eventual success their bid to join the labor market. Additionally 68% of the respondents identified lack of experience as one of the major hinderances to getting experience and also cited that that they believed that job placements and experience training was crucial for them. This percentage, according to Melvin (2013) was an increase from the previous year by 16%. As a result, it indicates that more young people are realizing the importance of job placements and experience training as compared to the past. Of all the respondents, the percentage of young people who felt that too much competition in the job market was a major challenge dropped by 10%. Therefore, it can be argued that the younger people are realizing that competition it the job market is not a more important factor to deter en there trajectory to joining the job market, as compared to the need for experience. Methodology Past research has indicated that it is clear that in general, young people in UK have a positive attitude and outlook towards job placements. However, not all young people have the same attitudes. It is necessary to identify other factors that can be suspected to be a determinant of what makes these young people to have the right attitude towards the use of job placements as a way to fast track them into their careers and to help them to transform from being fulltime students into being fulltime workers. According to the literature review outlined above, it is also clear that these students only have a positive attitude towards the idea of the use of job placements, but not all of them agreed that all types of job placements were effective in helping young people to gain any skills to get into fulltime employment. Some of the issues identified included the number of hours worked in a day. In this study, what are being investigated are the factors that determine how satisfied a young person may be with regard to job placements. What for instance are the factors that affect how young people will feel that the job placement they have been involved in is actually going to give them (or has already given them) the right skills, and therefore the confidence to get and immerse himself or herself into the fulltime career? The factors to be considered here are; • The time the young person was involved in the job placement program • The total hours that the person worked in a week by the young student in the job placement program • The nature of work and tasks they are given during this time (are they related to what the person is studying in school, are they menial tasks or is the student being given challenging tasks that he or she will actually be doing in their jobs when they eventually launch their career) • The payment/remuneration the person was getting while at the experience training program • The nature of the firm they were placed for their experience training program. Design The study will use two main ways to collect data. The first method is to use questionnaires to get the information from the respondents. As Krysik and Finn (2013) say, the use of questionnaires is an effective way of getting quantitative data, as long as it is implemented well. The second method in the dealing will be to use interviews to get information from the participants. Subjects or participants The study will study young people of ages between 18 and 25 and to identify the factors that may make them feel that job placements are important as a way to help them to get employed in fulltime jobs. The study will consider at least 3000 students who will be needed to fill a questionnaire. A further 50 young people will be interviewed for the purpose of getting more insight into the matter. Sampling procedure The sampling procedure that will be used will be probability sampling. With probability sampling, every member of the society will have an equal chance to selected (Bell, 2005). Yet, in order to be able to get a cohort that will be best suited to carry out the study, the sample population will then be adjusted in order to eliminate those who do not meet the required conditions. As identified, the participants have to meet two major conflicts in order for them to be considered for this study. These are; Age should be between 18 and 25 They should have participated in a job placement program in the past or should be in one at the current time during the time of the study. Instruments Interviews The advantage of using an interview is that in the study, there will be some information that cannot be presented in quantitative formats. An interview will help in capturing this information where the respondents will be granted a chance to answer open-end questions as opposed to closed question. This will give more insight into the matter. Questionnaires These will also help in collecting further information especially the quantitative type of information that may be required in the information. The questionnaires will have a number of questions that will require the responder to give a value on the likert scale. For instance, a responder may be asked how they feel about the use of job placement as a way to prepare the youth to the real world of work. The answers may be given as a range such as; useful, quite useful, useful and very useful. Each answer will have a weight to tit such as from zero for the last one to 4 for the best one. This will help to collect quantitative data that can then be utilised to carry out a statistical analysis of the issue. As Denscombe (2010) says, the use of using such tools that makes it easy for quantitative data to be collected can add a lot of validity to a survey. Reliability of the interviews Interviews will have some advantages as wells a disadvantages. The advantages will be that during the interview, open can read the body language and therefore get whore insight into what the responder really thinks. Procedure The initial task will be to prepare the questionnaires. To make sure that the questionnaires will be easy to understand, a few of them will be given to a few friends to answer them and identify any difficulties that they encountered in understanding what the questions were asking. This will be given to at least twenty people. This first part of the process will not be included in the final data set as it has a preliminary test to test the efficacy of the questionnaires. Once they give feedback and any errors and difficulties are identified, the questionnaires will be refined to now come up with a better questionnaire that will be utilised for the actual study. Activities involved Issuing the questionnaire The questionnaires will be handed out to individuals so they can fill them. These participants will be university students. As already identified, only those who are below age 25 will be given the questionnaire and who have been involved in a job placement in the last one year. The participants will be required to have filled and returned the questionnaire in the next 72 hours after receiving them. This will give them enough time to be able to go through the questionnaire and to have answered effectively (Andres, 2012). The importance of giving the participants enough time to fill in the questionnaire will be so that they have enough time in order not to rough through the process and this be tempted to give wrong or convenient information. The questionnaires will not necessarily be given to the all participants on the same day. The process of issuing out the questioner will be done over a period of between three days to about a week (seven days). Carrying out the interviews Due to the fact that doing an interview is an exhaustive process that needs a lot of resources, the study will only interview only a subset of those who will be involved in the larger study where questioners will be used. This is in regard to the size and magnitude of the study. As a result, from those who will be qualified for the study, a sub cohort of about fifty (50) students will be used, both females and males, for the interviews. Time factor The whole process is planned to take at least three weeks. The time schedule will be as follows; Week one; This time will be used for the collection of data, starting from the questionnaire. This will include the process of developing the questioner and the interview questions, issuing out the questioners and also receiving back these questionnaires back. Week two will include two main activities. The primary activity will be to carry out he interviews. With an average of 10 people interviewed every day five the five weekdays. This will allow for any inconveniences to be handled effectively. The inconveniences may be that some of the people sampled for the interviews may not be available on the scheduled day forth interview or they may be completely unavailable for the whole week of the interview. In the case that the participants is not available for the day and time set for his or her interview, the time will be rescheduled for another time when the person is available. If the person is completely unavailable, the one week will allow for more people to be included. To further deal with such inconveniences, at least eighty people will be selected for the interviews so that even after some are not able to attend the interviews, the threshold for 50 people will still be reached. The third week will involve the codification of the data. To begin with, the 300 questionnaires will be scrutinized to identify any that has any irregularity. Those with irregularities will be eliminated and only those that meet the standards will be considered for codification. The codification will use statistics analysis software such as SPSS or any relevant and useful software. Young people with an experience of using the SPSS will be hired to do the work of codification this inflation and digitizing it into a computer. Once the data is codified and digitized, it will be now the time for statistical analysis. This will involve identifying any visible trends in the data to identify how the data answers the research questions. Validity of the data The data will be valid because the participants will be asked direct questions that will be easy to answer. It will also be easy to identify any discrepancies, such as dishonest answers from the participant and any questionnaire that will be found to have irregularities will be eliminated from the actual codification and data analysis that will inform the study. For the sake of reporting however, the study will report the total number of participants, including those whose questionnaires were disqualified for the final codification of the data. The reasons for disqualification will also be communicated. Advantages of the methodology The benefit of this methodology is that it will be possible to get the feedback directly from the subjects who are being studied. Questionnaires and interviews are a way to directly get the information form subjects and this makes it an easy way to collect data. The other advantage is that it is financially effective since the only financial cost will be the money to print out the questionnaires. Where possible, the students can be asked to fill the questionnaires online thus minimizing the cost of the study. The students are also likely to be highly available, especially if the study will be done during the time when the students are not having major exams in campus. This will make it easier to sample the students and also to have a high chance of getting a sample population that is the most representative of the general population. Of course, there are some difficulties that have to be associated with this kind of methodology. To begin with, people are likely to give incorrect information in questionnaires and interviews. This is especially so when they think that there is something that is more convenient to say, or that there is a particular answer they are required to give. This may undermine the validity of the findings of the study. However, to deal with this issue, the questionnaires will be designed in a way to make sure hat the students are aware that they can give the right information without expecting any implicit consequences or results. To begin with, they will to be required to include their names or any identification information in the questionnaire. They will be given the right to submit the questionnaires anonymously by dropping them in a collection box after they are through with filling the questionnaires. Those who will be interviewed will be given the assurance that their names and identification information will not be linked with the answers they give. The objective of the study will also be well communicated. Alternative methodology An alternative methodology that can be used to implement this study could be the changing the actual participants replace them with the managers in the institution where the young people have been sent to work. The managers in this institution could be interviewed and asked to feel questionnaires about the factors they think that are the ones that affect the motivation and the attitudes of young people with regard to the job placements programs in their firms. The questions could be the same, but structured to be answered by the managers instead of the youth who are actually involved in these experience training programs. Advantages of this alternative methodology The managers are likely to give a more critical analysis of the situation based on how they rated the students who worked in their firms as part of job placements to as part of the experience training. They are likely to give more rational information as opposed to the student who may give the answers they think are politically correct. Disadvantages of the alternative methodology The main disadvantage is that the managers may not be easily accessible. This will be in regard to identifying the firms that have been able to have some young people on their job placement programs and then asking for interviews. This may be a hectic process and very few managers may even have the time for such interviews or the time to fill in the questionnaires. The sampling may not represent the larger population The other problems that may come up if such a methodology was to be used would be the fact that in such a case, the number of young people who should have been considered would hardly represent the larger population since there would be no way to sample them well. This would likely provide invalid results or misleading results. Since this study is about young people, making them to be the main participants is more important since it can be heard from the horse’s mouth what these young people feel about job placement programs. As a result, it can be argued that the chosen methodology for this survey will be the nest one. This is because it will help in getting the best representation of the target population and this will be important for the study. Reference list: Andres, L. (2012). Designing and Doing Survey Research. New York, NY: SAGE. Bell, J. (2005) Doing Your Research Project, Maidenhead: OU Press. Begg, A. (2012). Youth Unemployment and the Youth Contract: Second Report of Session 2012-13, Vol. 1: Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence, Volume 1. London, UK: The Stationery Office. Brain, T. (2010). A History of Policing in England and Wales from 1974: A Turbulent Journey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Bynner, J., & Chisholm, L. (1997). 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The voices of UK young people on their experience of the world of work, and their aspirations for the future. London, UK: The Work Foundation, in Conjunction With IFF Research. Payne, G. and Payne, J. (2004) Key Concepts in Social Research, London: Sage. Read More