READY STUDY – Wave 1a short summary report 2020

The READY study (Recording Emerging Adulthood in Deaf Youth) is a 6-year study funded by the National Deaf Children’s Society and led by the Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh. It follows up to 300 deaf young people over a 4 to 5 year period who were first recruited when they were between 15 and 19 years old. The aims of the study are to investigate in depth this period in the life course, a time when deaf young people face many changes including the transition to new educational environments, entering the workplace, independence from parents, and choices about how they want to shape their future. For all young people this is an intensive period of identity development, exploration and new challenges. How deaf young people fare in comparison with their peers, what enables them to overcome obstacles and what promotes wellbeing are important aspects of the study. In this summary report, we highlight some early findings from the first wave of data collection. This was severely interrupted by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. We chose to halt data collection in early March 2020 because we were concerned that some of the online questions and assessments may cause undue distress during a time when deaf young people were out of school/college/workplace and may be experiencing unprecedented levels of isolation. Therefore, this report is based on 9 months of data collection only and presents results from 92 deaf young people. The number of deaf young people who are now in the study has exceeded 120 and we are extending our initial recruitment phase up to June 2021. Those who have already contributed will be re-contacted for the second annual wave of data collection in due course.