Biographical Mappings on Subjective Well-Being (SWB): Enhancing Narratives of Young People with Disabilities during Their School-to-Work Transition.

Young people with disabilities face significant challenges during their transition from school-to-work, with employment rates remaining low (OECD, 2022). As failure to first enter the labor market can lead to limited participation, social isolation, lower wages, poorer health, and recurrent unemployment, they may experience lower SWB during and after the school-to-work transition phase (Hadjar & Backes, 2013; Hadjar & Kotitschke, 2021). Focusing on SWB as an important indicator in understanding successful school-to-work transitions of young people with disabilities, this study conducts biographical interview techniques to explore drivers and barriers during their transitions (Traue & Pfahl, 2022). To better capture variations of SWB during their life-course and identifyenabling and disabling factors that affect their SWB, we integrated a biographical mapping approach – a graphic elicitation strategy. This method incorporates both “researcher-created and respondent-generated visual data” (Schubring et al., 2019: 2), with the latter dominating the data production. By visualizing different strands of development, these drawings reveal the nonlinearity and multidimensionality of SWB in biographical trajectories (Schubring et al., 2019; Thiel et al., 2011). Preliminary findings highlight the methodological benefits of biographical mappings as a supportive tool for facilitating the narration of young people with disabilities during biographical interviews. In the context of researching SWB, this approach provides new opportunities for collecting, processing, analyzing, understanding and reporting SWB across life course trajectories. Our empirical results indicate that SWB tends to improve following the transition out of compulsory school. During the educational trajectory, SWB is influenced by various interconnected dimensions, with each carrying different levels of importance for individuals. In particular, positive relationships and strong social support seem to play a key role in enhancing SWB across these dimensions, while negative experiences impacting social well-being and mental health present ongoing challenges to overall SWB.