The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) tracks young people every year over a 10-year period, starting at age 15, to capture their transition from school to adulthood. LSAY captures data across a range of topics including schooling, educational and occupational aspirations, post-school education, employment, living arrangements, health and satisfaction with life. By linking data from LSAY with external data sources, we have the potential to add enormous value to the dataset by:
• providing more detailed, accurate and objective data about educational participation and attainment
• increasing the richness and depth of information by linking to data outside the scope of LSAY
• providing an opportunity to remove detailed questions from the survey and asking more engaging, attitudinal items.

To date, six cohorts have commenced the program, commencing in 1995 (Y95) through to the most recent cohort in 2015 (Y15). With the creation of the newest cohort in 2015, it is now possible to link LSAY records to National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data from Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. This will allow researchers to determine the impact of academic achievement at multiple life stages on young people’s transitions from school and their transitions into adulthood. By linking to datasets at the other end of the educational spectrum, for example vocational education and training (VET) and higher education, linkage can also help to address bias in the data as a result of survey attrition. In the absence of survey participation, extensive information on educational participation and attainment can still be obtained about cohort members who do not respond to the survey in subsequent waves.

The LSAY team is currently conducting a series of data linkage projects that look to link data from the most recent LSAY cohort (Y15) to various educational data sets. This includes linking LSAY to:
• My School
• the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)
• senior secondary school subject results
• the National VET Provider Collection
• the Higher Education Information Management System (HEIMS).

During this session we will discuss the requirements across the various data custodians to enable data linkage; rates of consent and how this varies across different characteristics, datasets and modes (telephone and online); rates of success in linking LSAY records to the different datasets; and preliminary results using the linked data.