YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

26 The present study introduces a partnership approach that seeks to tran- scend traditional institutional or personal rivalries in a research-mal- nourished field such as youth studies. Namely, the University of Maribor and the University of Ljubljana have recognized their role as a research pillar based on evidence-based public policy in this field and have strate- gically approached the implementation of this study, which should serve as the basis for future joint endeavours in this field. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Inadditiontoaclear commitment toresearchprinciples for evidence-based policy-making, towhichwewill devote a fewmorewords below, the current study maintains the methodological robustness of past research in this field both domestic (Jule and Vrcan, 1986) and foreign (e.g. Hurrelmann et al., 2002; 2006), while introducing conceptual and methodological in- novations, which are manifested as the opening of new topics (e.g. civic spaces for young people) and the exploration of newapproaches to existing topics (e.g. participation), and are derived from the latest German and British paradigms. Mladina 2020 continues the approach of Mladina 2010 and explains the findings by referring to contemporary interpretive and theoretical concepts of European and global social sciences. There- fore, it was necessary to acquaint the authors of individual chapters with the established theoretical bases and already conducted studies else- where in the world, and, as a rule, the authors of individual chapters are also experts in the fields they cover and explore these areas in their field research. This ensured that the highly internationalized research efforts on the topic of Slovenian youth also gained insight into the current state of ideas and concepts that are discussed by the academic and profession- al community at home and abroad. At the same time, it should be emphasized that the research team system- atically ensured that the study retains its informative value for the client and that is realizes its fundamental purpose, i.e. creating a stock of evi- dence-based support for shaping youth policy. Although the idea of evi- dence-based policy-making and implementation is not new, it has only