| Zena Mello
Pennsylvania State University
Across time and place: The development of adolescents' educational and occupational expectations in the context of parental and neighborhood socioeconomic status
FINAL REPORT:
Adolescents' expectations for future schooling and work are potentially important precursors of educational and occupational attainment in adulthood. Understanding how expectations develop from adolescence to adulthood by membership in demographic groups can provide information to researchers, educators, and policy makers, who seek to address inequalities in attainment. To this end, the purpose of this study was (1) to describe the development of educational and occupational expectations from adolescence (age 14) to adulthood (age 26) by gender, racial/ethnic group, and parental socioeconomic status (SES), (2) to examine how neighborhood SES was associated with educational and occupational expectations, and (3) to explore how components of parental and neighborhood SES-income, education, and occupation-differentially predict educational and occupational expectations.
This study drew from developmental psychological and sociological theoretical perspectives. The development of educational and occupational expectations referred to age-related changes in expectations. Developmental psychological perspectives suggested that, with age, individuals' expectations would change due to an increased emphasis on the future, exploration of educational and occupational roles, and information about future schooling and work (Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1968; Jacobs & Klaczynski, 2002; Lewin, 1939). Sociological perspectives indicated that such development would be shaped by demographic group membership and neighborhood-level SES (Burton & Jarrett, 2000; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Wilson, 1987). Thus, through the perception of barriers, individuals in low-SES and racial/ethnic minority groups would report lower expectations and a decline in expectations from adolescence to adulthood compared to their counterparts (Gottfredson, 1981; Lent, et al, 2000).
Data came from NELS:88 spanning twelve years (1988 to 2000) and the restricted access residential data set, which included US Census information for participants' resident zip-code in 1990. Multilevel growth curve modeling analyses (i.e., HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) indicated several important findings: (1) individuals' educational and occupational expectations were generally high and stable from ages 14 to 26, in which the majority of participants expected to attend or complete college and to obtain a professional occupation, (2) females reported higher expectations than their male counterparts, (3) African American and Latino participants reported higher expectations than their racial/ethnic minority counterparts, after controlling for SES and academic achievement, (4) parental SES had the largest influence on expectations relative to other demographic variables, (5) neighborhood SES was not associated with expectations, (6) parental education was more strongly related to educational expectations than parental-income or -occupation and a parental-income, -education, and -occupation composite was more strongly related to occupational expectations than any single parental SES component.
Interpretation of results focused on three interrelated topics: the extent to which individuals' anticipation of educational and occupational attainment in adulthood reflect perceptions of barriers to future schooling and work; immigrant and ethnic minority familial messages regarding the importance of education as a means of upward mobility; and the notion that expectations are constructed based on individuals' ideas about the future and/or societal expectations of educational and occupational attainment. Implications of this study draw attention to research on mechanisms that may facilitate individuals' high educational and occupational expectations.
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