The focus of this paper is the relevance of developing research tools that engage socio-cultural awareness. The project in question is a 2-year nationwide intensive inquiry in secondary school students’ psychological and emotional wellbeing in Kazakhstan led by a collaborative team of researchers from one UK and one Kazakhstani university. The first objective of the project was to investigate the level of transferability of a diagnostic tool developed during a previous study on young people’s wellbeing in the UK (McLellan & Steward, 2015) to the context of Kazakhstan. Another important aim of the project was to identify a series of indicators of wellbeing to be further developed and used by key actors actively engaged in improving students’ wellbeing across the country. Wellbeing is a complex concept, often difficult to translate both linguistically and culturally. Studying youth wellbeing involves developing research strategies that help to duly identify the major societal norms and values at play, including the historically embedded discourse of those norms and values (McNess, Arthur and Crossley, 2016). This is based on the premise that the concept of wellbeing is maintained and challenged by the specific cultural system from which it originated (Izquierdo, 2005). Within Kazakhstan, the cultural mapping shows important linguistic and ethnic diversity, such as, for example a strong Russian presence in the North and a Kazakh centered South. Kazakh centered values and norms have been reestablished after the independence (McMann, 2007) while the Soviet imprint remains visible everywhere and continues to shape interaction between individuals and institutions. The presentation will discuss how research strategies and tools can be adapted and applied in a culturally sensitive way to maximize trust between researchers and participants while ensuring the viability and integrity of the data.

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