This study explains the development of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) interest among elementary and middle schoolchildren. The cohort longitudinal design was applied, starting ...with three cohorts of students—fourth (10 years), fifth (11 years), and sixth (12 years) grade—followed for three consecutive years. A total of 947 pupils responded to general and specific STEM interest measures. The results show that the level of STEM interest of children is generally low. Gender differences in STEM interest in favor of boys are apparent in all STEM areas, except science. The observed gender gaps in interest over time are constant, except for a small increase in gender difference of engineering interest. The average rate of change of STEM interest over time is mostly insignificant. Large interindividual variability of interests’ scores and slopes indicates that the level of STEM interest and its change over time are highly individualized phenomena.
This paper evaluates the applicability of career construction model of adaptation for explaining after-school career transition in adolescence by examining the relationships between measures of ...adaptive readiness, adaptability resources, adapting responses, and adaptation results. To test the model, we conducted two studies on samples of high school students in Croatia (N1 = 622; N2 = 299). The first study focused primarily on the cross-sectional relations between adaptability resources and adapting responses, while the second study explored the full process of career adaptation in the longitudinal framework including all four dimensions of adaptation. As measures of adaptive readiness, GPA, personality traits and core self-evaluations were used. The adaptability resources were measured as four adaptability facets (concern, control, curiosity and confidence), while the adapting responses were operationalized as engagement in career construction and career decision-making difficulties. Adaptation results were operationalized as study satisfaction, study engagement and self-reported study performance. The results of the path analysis supported the career construction model of adaptation in both studies. Overall, the findings from the two studies supported the career construction model of adaptation indicating that adaptability resources and adapting behaviors had a mediating role in the process of career construction in adolescence. Furthermore, it was confirmed that adaptive readiness indirectly and directly influenced adaptability resources, adapting responses, and adaptation results. Career construction model of adaptation provides suitable framework for exploring career transition after high school.
•CCMA adequately explains career transition in adolescence.•Concern and control are the most prominent career adaptability resources in the model.•Study satisfaction and study engagement are well explained by the full CCMA.•Study performance is explained only by adaptive readiness.•CCT explained well sources and outcomes of after-school career transition.
In the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, the family still presents an untapped resource for promoting students’ motivation and achievement. Based on the ...premises of the Eccles’ model of parental socialization and the expectancy-value theory, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the socializing influence of parental beliefs in the STEM educational domain. More specifically, we discuss the role of parents’ values and self-efficacy in STEM, parents’ perception of children’s ability in STEM, and parents’ expectations for children’s STEM achievement. Reviewed studies show that all of these beliefs have a potential in explaining variations in students’ achievement motivation, performance, and career choices related to STEM. Parents’ child-specific beliefs and messages have shown to be the crucial socializing factors in this area. We further integrate and discuss the research findings on the gender differentiation in parents’ child-specific beliefs in STEM, possible explanations of this differentiation, and its importance for students’ gender-role socialization in STEM. The review also points out that the behavioral mechanisms through which parents may convey their STEM-related beliefs to their children are still unclear, presumably since the quality of parent–child interaction in STEM is often overlooked by researchers. Lastly, we present parent-oriented interventions aimed at fostering parents’ self-efficacy and utility value in STEM and at changing stereotypical images of STEM careers and STEM professionals. Based on this comprehensive review, methodological and conceptual implications for future research are discussed and improvements for parental intervention programs are proposed.
The shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals worldwide calls for research to identify social forces that can foster student career interest in this domain. ...In this study, we examined the underlying structure of middle school student STEM career interest and the role of their parents’ STEM-specific behaviors in explaining this interest. Students (
N
= 488) reported their interest in eighth grade (
M
age
= 14.48 years), while parental data were collected approximately 15 months earlier. Parents (
N
= 488) reported on their encouragement of their child’s STEM interest, provision of STEM materials for the child, and their own participation in STEM activities. Student grades in STEM school subjects were collected at the end of seventh grade. The findings suggest that in this age, students differentiate between their interest in science and engineering–technology-oriented career activities. Boys showed higher STEM interest than girls but only in the engineering–technology domain. Prior STEM school achievement predicted student science interest but not engineering–technology interest. After controlling for student gender and STEM achievement, the overall parent STEM support predicted both types of STEM interest, equally for boys and girls. However, parents reported more STEM-specific practices in case of sons than daughters. The results are discussed in the framework of the ontogeny of children’s STEM vocational interest and previous findings on the gendered socialization in STEM within the family. Implications for interventions and curricula in the STEM domain are also discussed.
The relations between interests, personality and career adaptability were explored in two separate studies. In the first study, the RIASEC measure Occupational Preference Scale was applied along with ...personality inventories HEXACO-PI-(R)-100 and IPIP-50 on a sample of 602 university students and young adults. In the second study, PGI-Short, HEXACO-60 and Career Adapt-Abilities Scale were applied on a sample of 981 high-school graduates. Results from both studies were discussed together, and general conclusions about overlapping of interests, personality and career adaptability domains were drawn on the basis of correlational analyses and property vector fitting. Both studies have shown weak to moderate relations between interests and personality. In the HEXACO framework, it was found that Openness to Experience was positively related to creative interests, Emotionality was positively related to social interests and negatively related to technical interests, Extraversion was positively related to social and managing interests, and Honesty–Humility was negatively related to interests for business and finance. In the Big Five framework, Agreeableness was related to Social and Artistic interests, and Intellect to Artistic interests. The HEXACO personality domains showed predictive advantage for explaining interests in comparison to Big Five dimensions. The relation between career adaptability and interests was weak, and almost negligible when personality was included in hierarchical regression analysis. Career adaptability was weakly related to highly prestigious interests. Adaptability facets Concern, Control and Confidence were oriented toward data pole of interest space. The general factor of interests was weakly correlated with Openness Extraversion, Career Adaptability, and adaptability facets Confidence and Curiosity. Observed findings are as expected and in line with previous research.
•Personality traits showed expected pattern of relations to vocational interests.•Openness to Experience showed the strongest correlations with interests among other personality traits.•HEXACO traits explained greater amount of interest variance than Big Five traits.•Career Adaptability had weak incremental validity over personality in explaining interests.•General factor of interests was weakly related to Openness to Experience, Extraversion and Career Adaptability.
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of piloting approaches, systemize piloting processes, and underline good practices in large scale longitudinal birth cohort studies. We identified ...54 eligible studies, and by applying predefined inclusion criteria, we included 10 studies in the systematic review. The main findings are that the longitudinal birth cohort surveys most often include all three types of pilots in every sweep—pre-test, instruments pilot and dress rehearsal. Sampling procedures and sample sizes in pilots vary a lot depending on the type and aims of a pilot, and from sweep to sweep. The reporting on piloting and its key findings is regularly present in longitudinal birth cohort studies, especially for instruments pilots and dress rehearsals, while it is less common for pre-tests. Based on the findings, the recommendations for other researchers are to adopt the same terms for different types of pilots—pre-pilots, instruments pilots and dress rehearsals, to extend and uniform reports on piloting, to report information about pilots’ response and attrition rates, and to dedicate a separate chapter to piloting in survey general technical report.
Adolescents’ interests and goals for pursuing a career in the environmental, social and economic sustainability domains were explored within the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) framework. ...Respondents were secondary school graduates from Croatia who participated in an online study (
N
= 582). Using SEM, the SCCT model was confirmed as an adequate framework for conceptualizing the origins of career interests and goals in the three sustainability domains, especially with contextual supports and barriers included as both direct and indirect effects (via learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations) on goals. Implications of results for career guidance practice and policies are discussed.
The aim of this study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of the Croatian paper-and-pencil and Internet versions of the Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ). The ...CDDQ is based on the theoretical taxonomy of difficulties in career decision-making and comprises three major clusters of difficulties: Lack of readiness, lack of information, and inconsistent information that are further divided into 10 specific types of difficulties. The paper-and-pencil version and the Internet version were filled out by 451 and 568 high school students, respectively. Both versions of the Croatian CDDQ showed to be reliable and structurally equivalent measures. A hierarchical cluster analysis and confirmatory factor analysis generally supported the three-cluster classification system of career decision-making difficulties, with the exception of the Dysfunctional Beliefs Scale that was not significantly associated with any of the other scales. The associations between the CDDQ Scales on the one hand, and two measures of career maturity—Student Career Construction Inventory and Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale—were moderate and negative and thus supported the concurrent validity of the CDDQ. The results suggest revising the dysfunctional beliefs subscale or using the CDDQ without this scale in counseling practice.
The study examines the effectiveness of a career intervention in middle schools. The intervention was organized in eight 45-minute-long group sessions. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design ...was applied, with 120 students in the experimental group and 156 in the control group. Small- to medium-size effects were found in terms of reduction of lack of career information and an increase in independence in career decision-making. The observed effects were stable across gender and for high and low school achievers.
The HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) has become one of the most heavily applied measurement tools for the assessment of basic personality traits. Correspondingly, the inventory has ...been translated to many languages for use in cross-cultural research. However, formal tests examining whether the different language versions of the HEXACO-PI-R provide equivalent measures of the 6 personality dimensions are missing. We provide a large-scale test of measurement invariance of the 100-item version of the HEXACO-PI-R across 16 languages spoken in European and Asian countries (N = 30,484). Multigroup exploratory structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses revealed consistent support for configural and metric invariance, thus implying that the factor structure of the HEXACO dimensions as well as the meaning of the latent HEXACO factors is comparable across languages. However, analyses did not show overall support for scalar invariance; that is, equivalence of facet intercepts. A complementary alignment analysis supported this pattern, but also revealed substantial heterogeneity in the level of (non)invariance across facets and factors. Overall, results imply that the HEXACO-PI-R provides largely comparable measurement of the HEXACO dimensions, although the lack of scalar invariance highlights the necessity for future research clarifying the interpretation of mean-level trait differences across countries.
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