Journal of Applied Youth Studies

The Journal of Applied Youth Studies (JAYS) is a scholarly journal publishing across the research – policy – practice – theory spectrum on issues that concern youth and young adults. The journal is an interdisciplinary journal providing high quality debate on the issues, experiences and policies that impact young people’s lives. It aims to be of relevance to researchers, students, practitioners and policy-makers. The journal publishes, theoretical and policy papers, and qualitative and quantitative analytical articles. All papers in this journal are subject to editorial screening and double-blind peer review. The journal is published 4 times a year.  

The journal welcomes sociological research on youth studies, as well as interdisciplinary original manuscripts on issues that depict youth and young adults lives, such as education, employment, transitions, subculture, social policy, crime, wellbeing, family, housing, urban and rural, citizenship, political participation, migration, mobility, multiculturalism, justice, and digital technologies and social media. The journal has a youth sociology focus and not an adolescent or educational psychological approach. It welcomes manuscripts that aim to understand and explain youth and young adults’ lives rather than studies that utilise youth as merely the sample, context or background to their research.

The Journal of Applied Youth Studies publishes manuscripts that focus on:

•        the application of theory into youth studies
•        the application and interrogation of methodologies for the study of youth and how these shape up differently if we take the lives and experiences of young people seriously
•        the application of policy analysis to examine youth as a political and economic construct
•        the application of key youth studies themes, such as transition, identity, belonging and citizenship, into various contexts and how these deepen our understandings of what it means to be young
•        the application of theory into practice (including youth and social work) and how research-led evidence can explain and improve youth and young adults lives.

The journal welcomes original research manuscripts, as well as book reviews on youth studies scholarship. It aims to contribute to deeper understandings of youth, youth theory, youth methodologies, youth policy and youth practices; and therefore critically engage with research that serves to address inequalities and explain social change, and provide transformative insights into youth lives. It includes leading research and scholarship from sociology and different disciplines such as: education, social work, criminology, political science, anthropology, health and wellbeing, geography, Indigenous studies, social policy, and cultural studies.