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Quality of Life Among Young Finnish Adults not in Employment or Education

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Abstract

Throughout Europe, there have been constant efforts to calculate the number of young adults not in employment or education. Less knowledge exists on the subjective wellbeing of this hard-to-reach group. In this article we examine the self-reported quality of life (QoL) of young Finnish adults not in employment or education. Original data was drawn from structured and supervised interviews (n = 147) conducted among young adults (16–30) not in employment or education to set it against a nationally representative sample (n = 575) of their counterparts by using WHOQOL-BREF as the main instrument. To reveal the key characteristics of QoL among young adults not in employment and education, the original data was analysed both quantitatively, using descriptive and multivariate methods, and qualitatively, using content analysis. According to the results, most young adults not in employment or education suffer from shortcomings in QoL, mostly in the physical, psychological and social domains. Loneliness and financial difficulties are the independent variables that are most strongly and systematically associated with low QoL. In the respondents’ accounts, deficiencies in psychological QoL in particular are explained by long-term detachments from peers and experiences of being excluded. Financial difficulties are linked with the diminished ability to maintain physical health and with increased stress and anxiety. In some accounts, poor physical and mental conditions were given as reasons for not being in employment or education.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed description of the transformation of the scores, see the instructions by WHO (1996).

  2. To avoid a binary notion of gender, the information was obtained with a four-dimension question – “male”, “female”, “other”, and “I don’t want to say”. However, in statistical analysis only males and females can be validly compared.

  3. The reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of the physical (.794), psychological (.858) and environmental (.739) domains was satisfactory. For the social domain, the reliability was slightly below the satisfactory level (.689).

  4. In the Wellbeing and Services survey, the corresponding standard deviations (in the same order) were 13.3, 13.9, 17.1 and 11.8. However, when comparing two samples of different sizes, a more commensurable indicator is the coefficient of variation. In all domains of QoL, the coefficient of variation is notably higher in the PROMEQ than in the HYPA data (again, the indicators are in the same order: 27.8/15.9, 37.0/18.2, 33.5/21.2 and 22.4/15.2).

  5. The corresponding share has fluctuated, depending on the method of producing the data, between three and approximately 10 % in later surveys (see Aaltonen et al. 2018).

  6. In terms of frequencies, 76.7% of all respondents reported being in contact with their mothers on a weekly basis at least, while the corresponding figure for contact with fathers was 47.6%. In a nationally representative Youth Barometer, the percentage for mothers was 50% and 41% for fathers among young people aged between 15 and 29 years (Myllyniemi 2012, 36).

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Funding

This research was funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland, grant no. 303615/303650.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Finnish Youth Research Society, Asemapäällikönkatu 1, 00520, Helsinki, Finland

    Antti Kivijärvi, Sanna Aaltonen & Martta Myllylä

  2. Faculty of Social Sciences (Health Sciences), University of Tampere, PO box 100, 33014, Tampere, Finland

    Leena Forma & Jussi Partanen

  3. National Institute of Health and Welfare, PO box 30, 00271, Helsinki, Finland

    Pekka Rissanen

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  1. Antti Kivijärvi
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  2. Sanna Aaltonen
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Correspondence to Antti Kivijärvi.

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Kivijärvi, A., Aaltonen, S., Forma, L. et al. Quality of Life Among Young Finnish Adults not in Employment or Education. Applied Research Quality Life 15, 757–774 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9687-z

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