Centre for Youth and Life Course Research (TRACE) is organised around three methodological pillars. Each pillar is strong in its own right, but their scientific value lies in being developed and used together. Their integration allows for forms of analysis that are rarely possible and represents a significant methodological advance within youth and life course research.
Qualitative longitudinal research
The qualitative core of TRACE is the Inequality in Youth programme (Ungdom i endring), a multi sited qualitative longitudinal study following young people across contrasting Norwegian communities from early adolescence into adulthood. The programme was originally developed as a qualitative counterpart to Ungdata, ensuring strong thematic alignment across data sources.
The programme currently consists of two contemporary cohorts and a set of historically aligned qualitative longitudinal studies conducted at NOVA. Cohort 1 follows young people born in 2005 across seven interview waves beginning in 2018, with parallel interviews with parents, enabling two generation longitudinal analysis. Cohort 2 replicates this design with young people born around 2015, with fieldwork beginning in 2028.
A distinctive strength of the programme is its historical depth. Inequality in Youth is integrated with earlier qualitative longitudinal youth studies conducted approximately twenty years apart, as well as a three generation qualitative study tracing family biographies across the twentieth century.
Together, these studies provide structured qualitative cohort coverage across successive generations, enabling analysis of how youth trajectories are shaped by changing social, educational and labour market contexts.
Nordic collaboration
The Norwegian programme is embedded in a coordinated Nordic qualitative longitudinal infrastructure developed through the FUNORE collaboration. This includes parallel studies in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, designed with closely aligned interview guides and shared analytical frameworks.
From around 2027, all four Nordic countries will initiate new, directly comparable qualitative longitudinal cohorts, creating a scientific opportunity that is virtually without parallel internationally.
Quantitative longitudinal research
The quantitative pillar of TRACE brings together a unique set of longitudinal cohort studies spanning birth cohorts from the 1970s to the 2010s. Young in Norway follows a nationally representative population based cohort born in the 1970s from adolescence into middle adulthood across five survey waves between 1992 and 2020.
The study includes extensive linkage to administrative registers covering education, income, prescriptions, crime and welfare, and provides nearly three decades of follow up. DNA samples collected at the fifth wave further extend the analytical possibilities.
Ungdata Plus follows a county representative panel of young people born in the 2010s from middle childhood through adolescence and into early adulthood across five planned waves between 2023 and 2039. The study includes geocoding and planned linkage to national administrative registers.
Ungdata Plus was co designed with Inequality in Youth Cohort 2, ensuring alignment in age structure, follow up and core thematic content.
Together, Young in Norway and Ungdata Plus provide a forty year quantitative cohort span that is virtually unparalleled in international youth research. Their design allows the studies to function as quantitative and qualitative counterparts, enabling integration of process oriented qualitative analyses with population level life course modelling.
Repeated cross-sectional data
The third pillar of TRACE draws on large-scale repeated cross-sectional studies that make it possible to analyse trends across successive cohorts of Norwegian youth.
Ungdata is the largest youth study in Norway, with more than one million responses collected since 1992. It is an unrivalled resource for examining changes in adolescent health, wellbeing and social life across more than three decades of societal change.
Ungvold, a study of violence victimisation and perpetration conducted in 2007, 2015 and 2023, with a fourth wave planned for 2028, adds a critical dimension not fully covered by the cohort studies. The 2007 cohort is linked to administrative registers, creating a longitudinal dataset that traces how early exposure to violence shapes life course outcomes into the mid-thirties. In this way, Ungvold effectively functions as a third longitudinal cohort, bridging Young in Norway and Ungdata Plus in historical time.
Together, these programmes anchor TRACE’s cohort-based research within the broader landscape of generational change.
