Interest in young people’s wellbeing has been steadily increasing across political, social and educational contexts as reflected by attempts at conceptualization, definition and quantification through the burgeoning number of internationally comparable indicators and frameworks [1] [2] [3] . An increased attention towards the monitoring of young people’s wellbeing can also be found at the policy level, especially after the United Nations developed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Since this declaration, there have been numerous international calls to not only include young people’s wellbeing in systematic and detailed statistical national accounts [4] [5] [6] [7] , but also to develop positively framed youth wellbeing indicators suitable across developmental trajectories [8] .

It has been widely recognized that a strong sense of wellbeing enables young people to engage positively and confidently with their environments and therefore to take full advantage of learning opportunities [9] . While the importance of young people’s wellbeing on effective learning and positive development is undisputed, there are still conflicting perspectives on what young people’s wellbeing actually looks like and how to effectively measure it [10] [11] . However, it should be noted that the concept of wellbeing has often been discussed in the literature as an “elusive” concept challenging to define [12] . These difficulties have been commonly linked to the nature of wellbeing as a multidimensional phenomenon, making it difficult to encapsulate in a brief theory and hence to be operationalized as a universal measurable quantity [10] . Another critical contributing factor to the apparent challenge in defining wellbeing may be its multidisciplinary nature, with the concept of wellbeing being commonly described as an umbrella term that encompasses an array of specific indicators and concepts [13] with no agreed definition across disciplines [14] .

Moreover, when seeking to understand the complexities of wellbeing, the importance of cultural context is inherent in any description of wellbeing as a socially contingent construct embedded in culture and prone to change and redefinition over time, both in terms of changes in individual’s life course as well as socio-cultural context [10] [14] [15] . Therefore, when considering the relevance of wellbeing for different individuals and groups, wellbeing measures and policies need to be continually reassessed and redefined in order to ensure that they are still meeting the wellbeing needs of the society in question [16] .

The research project presented in this article attempted to capture young people’s conceptualization of their wellbeing by utilizing qualitative, young people-focused research methodology. This kind of research not only affirms young people as competent social actors, and therefore valid source of information [15] , but also emphasizes cultural context, thus enabling for better capture of local understandings and the diversity of meanings young people give to wellbeing [17] . More importantly, little is known about the wellbeing of children and young people living in post-Soviet nations contexts such as Kazakhstan [18] and even less is known about how political and educational reform has impacted on generations brought up under the very different regimes of capitalism and communism [19] . Therefore the aim of this paper is to add to the existing body of knowledge on young people’s wellbeing by utilizing the case of Kazakhstan as an illustrative example of a post-Soviet context of non-Western traditions and culture.

Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined the Commonwealth of Independent States. Since then it has undergone a significant economic transformation by actively engaging in a wide range of political reforms, which include a modernization agenda to improve public service provision, with increased focus on educational reform [20] . These wide-reaching and ongoing social changes in life conditions and lifestyles have also transformed values. This period of economic prosperity has contributed to the transition from a collectivist approach to individualism, which is complicated and controversial in Kazakhstani traditional society, especially for the older generation [21] . Research suggests that younger cohorts are more interested in personal competitiveness, careers, entrepreneurship and freedom of conviction, all values characteristic in Western societies, which coexist with certain collectivist traditional historical and cultural features in the minds of younger generation [22] . Mukhtar [22] further argues that despite these transformations, in the culture of contemporary Kazakhstan family, labor, and prosperity still come forefront which allow for the blurring of boundaries between traditional and individualistic values. In addition, a socioeconomic crisis has engulfed Kazakhstan in the past three years and has considerably affected young people’s health and wellbeing, especially those who are most vulnerable [23] .

Increasingly, young people’s views have been recognized as providing a unique perspective of the world and positively contributing towards the better monitoring of key issues affecting their lives, while enabling the more effective development of student centered quality supports, services and policies [24] . However, this has not always been the case as research into young people’s wellbeing has been widely appropriated as a way of capturing adult aspirations for young people [25] . Adults’ views have traditionally informed policy and practice, with parents often considered to be the primary voice of their child [15] . It has been argued that this adult-centered approach has led to the development of definitions and theories of young people’s wellbeing that are often conceptions that convey adults’ understanding of young people’s wellbeing as opposed to young people’s own constructions of their wellbeing [26] . There has also been little acknowledgement that children’s and young people’s perspectives are different and separate from those of adults, thus young people have been rendered as “objects” rather than active participants [27] . However, emerging evidence has highlighted that children and young people do not necessarily share adults’ views on what is important to them and their wellbeing, further highlighting that we cannot solely rely on adults’ inferences [14] [26] [28] . The inclusion of young people’s perspectives in all stages of research has also been identified as a crucial step in building a solid foundation on which to develop data collection instruments that are relevant and meaningful to young people, potentially enabling the development of more valid and reliable measures and indicators of young people’s wellbeing [25] . So far, no research has attempted to explore what wellbeing means for young people in Kazakhstan; therefore rather than take an assumptive air of what young people need, the project reported in this paper sought to explore young people’s perspectives on their wellbeing directly to determine how young people in Kazakhstan conceptualize and define the complex issue of wellbeing.

This paper draws on data collected as part of a wider mixed-methods collaborative research project that lasted two years (April 2015 - June 2017) and was organized in four phases. Qualitative data that were collected in phases one and two from 49 mixed-gender focus groups (5 - 7 participants) from grades 9 (between the ages of 13 - 14 years), 10 (between the ages 15 - 16 years) and 11 (between the ages of 17 - 18 years) will form the focus of this paper. All participants were selected on a voluntary basis either by the research team members or class teachers to ensure a willingness to participate. As the research was conducted in mainstream schools during lessons, the grades and thus participants were selected based on their availability. It is also important to note that the qualitative data reported on in this paper were obtained from four distinct school clusters representing the range of schools that exist in Kazakhstan in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of young people’s wellbeing. Cluster I (CI) represents selective secondary schools. The non-selective secondary schools were then divided into the three following clusters: cluster II (CII) (urban mainstream secondary schools), cluster III (CIII) (rural mainstream secondary schools), and cluster IV (CIV) (multi-graded small village schools where students from different age groups are educated in the same class and are a particular feature of the Kazakhstani educational system in sparsely populated areas). The data were drawn from eleven different locations and included 29 secondary schools, covering south, east, west, north-west, north, and central Kazakhstan (for more detail please see the Table 1 below).