Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-247). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

This study examined socioeconomic status (SES) and perceived social class as predictors of career adaptability and educational aspirations in a sample of American high school students. SES was measured using caregivers' occupation and education, and the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status--Youth Version (Goodman et al., 2001) assessed subjective social class. Career adaptability was be measured using the Career Futures Inventory-Revised (CFI-R; Rottinghaus, Buelow, Matyja, & Schneider, 2012) and the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) Form C (Savickas & Porfeli, 2011). Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regressions. SES and perceived social class independently predicted educational aspirations and expectations, while SES independently predicted occupational aspirations and expectations. Expected correlations between CFI-R and CMI Form C scales were found, providing convergent validity evidence and supporting the use of the CFI-R with adolescents. This study represents a step toward developing empirically informed vocational interventions that take SES and social class into account.

Research summary: Behavioral Theory highlights the crucial role of social comparisons in attention allocation in adaptive aspirations. Yet, both the specification of social reference points and the dynamics of attention allocation have received little scholarly examination. We address performance feedback from two social reference points relative to divisions in multidivisional firms: economic reference point and political reference point. Comparing divisional performance with the two reference points can give consistent or inconsistent feedback, which has important consequences for the dynamics of attention allocation in adaptive aspirations. We find consistent feedback leads to more attention to own experience, while inconsistent feedback results in more attention to the social reference point the focal division underperforms. Results reveal that political reference point plays an important role in determining managerial attention allocation.Managerial summary: This article is based on how goal-based performance of divisions relative to both their relevant external market rivals and sister divisions in multidivisional firms influences corporate resource allocation. As a result, various combinations of performance against the two groups of peers drive the reallocation of divisional management attention. We show that specific attention shifts occur on average as a function of the focal division's performance relative to the marketplace performance and that of sister divisions. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

During the course of the last decade successive governments in the UK have placed young people’s aspirations at the core of their attempts to address poor outcomes within the education system and the labour market. An area-based approach to policy has come to the fore which links ‘low aspirations’ with particular community- and neighbourhood-level factors, in particular area-level deprivation. This area-based focus on the determinants of aspirations has faced intensifying critique from the academic research base. Responding to this policy and research debate, this thesis examines whether, and how, young people’s occupational aspirations are shaped by the areas they live in. The thesis is based on a mixed methods research design and has two sections: an extensive phase and an intensive phase. The extensive phase of the research consists of logistic regression analysis of data from the Understanding Society Youth Questionnaire, and considers whether the types of occupations young people aspire to vary between different types of area. The intensive phase of the research consists of phenomenographic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with young people in a deprived, outer-urban neighbourhood in Manchester, and considers how young people’s subjective orientations towards the area they live in produce different forms of aspiration. The thesis finds compelling evidence that young people’s occupational aspirations are shaped by the areas they live in, but does not corroborate the claim at the core of current government policy, that aspirations are lower in more deprived areas. The extensive phase of the research instead identifies area type, rather than deprivation, as the primary area-level factor shaping young people’s aspirations, with young people from particular inner city area types almost five times as likely as their peers from deprived outer-urban areas to aspire to ‘higher’ professional, managerial and technical occupations. Meanwhile, the intensive phase of the research finds evidence that experiences of neighbourhood and family life in an area of concentrated deprivation can lead young people to adopt particular forms of aspiration that require lower levels of skill and further training, but on closer examination of the motivations for these forms of aspiration, finds little evidence that these aspirations are straightforwardly ‘low’. Above all, the research demonstrates that young people produce multiple different senses of place, and myriad forms of aspiration, from within the same deprived spatial context: they do not simply reproduce what they see around them when imagining their futures. While there is compelling evidence that young people’s occupational aspirations are shaped by the areas they live in, these area effects demand more nuanced research alongside policy approaches that are more receptive to young people’s constructions of place.

The problem of this thesis is the degree of aspiration (level of aspiration) exhibited by students with high or low levels of academic performance. With these levels established by the use of a standardized test designed for this purpose, this study is concerned more specifically with testing two hypotheses.

Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / Community violence has been found to have profound negative effects on the lives of those exposed to it daily. The victims often tend to be adolescents, who, while striving for a better future, are often quite vulnerable to its effects. The present study focuses on the perception’s parents hold of their adolescent’s sense of safety and future aspirations in a community with high levels of violence. The data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with participants residing in a community prone to violence. The researcher purposively sampled eight participants and conducted interviews in both English and Afrikaans.

Well-being and meaningfulness in life are linked to the relative value that individuals place on various life goals or aspirations. The variation in the pursuit of these goals depend mainly on personality differences. This study investigated the relations between personality traits and aspirations and their effect on subjective well-being and meaningfulness. A questionnaire with four measures targeting the respective variable of interest were used. Data were analyzed through correlation analysis and multiple regression. Results showed strongest correlation for intrinsic aspirations with openess and agreeableness, and extrinsic aspirations with agreeableness. For well-being, the strongest predictors were extraversion and neuroticism, while aspirations showed no significant effect. For meaningfulness, openness and agreeableness had positive and negative effects respectively, whereas both intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations showed positive effect. In summary, personality traits seems to be a better predictor than aspirations of the effect on well-being. The valence of an aspiration however, indicate a clearer path towards meaningfulness than the categorization of aspirations per se. The findings support theories of affect and self-determination, but future replications are needed in order to clarify more distinct patterns.

ABSTRACT Pro or Bust: Career Aspirations of Division I and Community College Basketball Players Alexander Shahriar Engel The purpose of this study was to determine the difference, if any, between Division I and community college basketball players career aspirations. Interviews were held with eleven athletes from the Cal Poly Men’s Basketball team, and ten athletes from the Cuesta College Men’s Basketball team. The interviews were used to determine the impact of different variables on the athletes career aspirations, and to explore themes in the data. To look for themes, both axial and open coding was used. Division I athletes were more likely to aspire to be professional basketball players than the athletes at the community college level. However, community college athletes aspired toward higher education levels overall. Many of the variables such as low parental involvement and low socioeconomic status that typically have a negative impact on career aspirations did not seem to affect these athletes long term academic and professional aspirations. Being involved in athletics may shield or reduce the negative effects of the variables on the athletes; however, further study is needed. These findings can help coaches, athletic departments, and individuals working with youth. Keywords: Career aspirations, college athletes, men’s basketball, Division I, community college

Schooling is a social project of making futures. Youth and families navigate aspirations framed by perceptions of what is possible within starkly unequal conditions of possibility. In Cape Town, persistent colonial and apartheid geography that continues to normalize racialized inequality is made visible and reproduced in large part through schooling patterns and outcomes. The convergence of post-apartheid reforms and global neoliberal trends have accelerated processes of education marketization, including a growing sector of “affordable” private schools that claim to level uneven terrain and interrupt poverty by shaping upwardly mobile youth from township communities. Critics argue they fuel an educational crisis, causing further differentiation in an already inequitable system. Proponents point to failing state schools and assert families’ right to quality education. My research foregrounds perspectives and experiences of those confronted with this double bind between “choice” and “crisis.” Based on 21 months of ethnographic research including participant observation, 35 semi-structured interviews, six unfocused groups, and a 110-respondent educational autobiography survey, A Ticket to Life explores how students, alumni, families, and staff of a low-fee independent high school in Cape Town’s oldest township, navigate the racial and spatial politics of aspiration in an anti-Black city as well as how the school is embedded in the broader racialized politics of transnational education reform. Engaging anthropology, Black studies, and comparative education, I argue that the spatial and affective valences of aspiration are both violent and life-saving in the context of uneven geography, that deep investments in liberal individualist notions of aspiration compromise commitments to liberatory pedagogies, and that, in the context of global racial capitalism, aspiration is deployed as a portable logic to support the transnational spread of market-based education reforms. Nevertheless, youth, families, and educators (in schools and beyond) harness education as both a site and a strategy of struggle, in the process forging a capacity to conspire toward the inextricable goals of racial and spatial justice.

This study used the qualitative technique of focused interviewing to understand the educational and occupational aspirations of ten Latino youth and their parents in a small town in rural Utah. The qualitative nature of this study allowed for an in-depth look into each parent's aspirations for themselves and for their youth, each youth's aspirations, the barriers to aspirational attainment for both parents and youth, the perceived parental support in these families, and their perceived needs for aspirational attainment. This study used two open-ended interview forms and a 12- question demographic questionnaire to collect data from each of the 30 persons. This sample was made up of primarily Mexican immigrants, with five youth of each sex and a mean age of 14.6 years. Using modified analytic induction and the organizational capabilities of QSR NUD*IST, a qualitative software package, themes and subthemes were created from the interview transcripts. These themes were examined as to their interrelatedness within families, and in relation to all the families in the study. Most Latino parents' aspirations were found to transfer to their youth. However, only half of the parents were aware of their youth's aspirations, and few parents had discussed them with their youth. Though all parents wanted their youth to go to college, they did not know how to get them there. Parents felt that a lack of understanding of the pathway to their aspirations, a lack of English proficiency, and a lack of time were real barriers to realizing their aspirations. Youth and their parents indicated that parental educational support was rather limited due to parents' insufficient English abilities. Parents indicated that they needed education and access to information to achieve the aspirations they had for themselves. Continued work needs to be done to provide Latino families with additional education and training so that these families may attain their aspirations. Programs for youth and families are needed to help foster these aspirations and the understanding of how to achieve them.