Career Motivation and Achievement Planning, 1980-1993

The purpose of this study was to examine the career motivation patterns of both men and women, particularly in reference to why some individuals are able to follow through on their aspirations of breaking into science and technology careers, while others are not.<br /><br /> The data consist of a qualitative subsample of larger longitudinal study that looked more generally at the career motivations of a diverse group of high school students. The first wave of the larger study was carried out in 1980, while the participants were 9th and 12th grade students at six Midwestern high schools. Two schools were from urban districts, two from rural districts, and two were suburban. Questionnaires on a variety of motivational issues related to both personalityand environment were sent to the students. Students returning questionnaires numbered 2,082, and after cases were dropped due to missing data, 1,863 participants were retained. In 1990, a second round of questionnaires were sent to the participants, with 459 returning usable data.<br /><br /> Of the 459 participants in the second phase of the study, 173 had originally expressed aspirations for science or technology fields in 1980. To better understand the pathways that lead to "persistence" in science careers, a selection of 97 of these participants was combined with 6 participants who held science jobs without previously demonstrating scientific aspirations and 7 participants from other occupational fields, for a total of 105 participants. This final sample for the qualitative wave of the study is 54% women, 21% minority, and 14% immigrant.<br /><br /> The participants were interviewed two times in person between spring 1991 and summer 1993 by trained graduate students. All of the participants had previously agreed to be interviewed in the second wave of the study. The major themes of these semi-structured interviews include: family, parents, education, counseling, work/home, self, decisions, motivations, significant others, role models, transitions, worldview, experiences, obstacles, and critical events. The interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed, summarized, and coded using Hyperqual for Macintosh.<br /><br /> The Murray Research Archive holds interview transcripts for 105 participants in electronic text file format (.txt), 105 interview summaries on paper, and Hyperqual coding files for each of the 105 participants <b>(paper data have been digitized and are available for on-line access).</b> Follow-up is possible with the consent of the contributor.