2009 - Family Socioeconomic Status, Parental Involvement, and College Major Choices- Gender, Race/Ethnic, and Nativity Patterns

Attribution: Ma, Yingyi
Researchers: Yingyi Ma
University Affiliation: Syracuse University
Email: yma03@syr.edu
Research Question:
This article focuses on family socio-economic status (SES) and parental involvement to examine potential family influences on patterned college major choice by gender, race/ethnicity, and nativity.
Published: Yes
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Sociological Perspectives
Journal Entry: Vol. 52, No. 2, Pp. 211-234
Year: 2009
Findings:
  1. Males’ concentrate in technical fields over four time as much as females’ in two-year colleges and over three times as much as females’ in four-year colleges.
  2. There are more Blacks in technical fields in two-year colleges than other race. There are more Asians in technical fields in four-year colleges than any other race.
  3. Immigrant students have a higher tendency to choose business fields and technical fields in four-year universities.
  4. Math achievement is positively related to choosing a technical major.
  5. Family SES has a strong negative influence on choosing a technical major. This indicates that students from lower SES families are more likely to major in a technical major. This reaffirms the hypothesis that students from lower SES families tend to avoid risky majors and favor those majors that have relatively better job prospects.
  6. SES has differential effects on men and women. While men in general are equally likely to choose a lucrative college major, poor women are likely to be attracted to lucrative college majors compared to other wealthier women.
  7. For racial minorities and whites, higher SES is associated with a lower likelihood of choosing a technical field.
  8. Domain-specific parental involvement matters for children’s choice of college major.
  9. Lower SES children are found to favor more lucrative college majors.
  10. Family SES is found to have differential effects on men and women and for racial/ethnic minorities and whites.
  11. Parental involvement in children’s domain-specific education exerts significant effects on children’s college major choice.
  12. Shows that SES impacts choosing a STEM major.
Scholarship Types: Journal Article Reporting Empirical ResearchKeywords: CollegeCollege Major ChoiceFamilyGenderRaceSESRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Descriptive StatisticsHeckman's Two-Stage Method Sampling Frame:High School to College Students
Sampling Types: Nationally RepresentativePopulationAnalysis Units: StudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Theory draws from effectively maintained inequality (EMI) which posits that high SES families secure for their children some degree of advantages wherever advantages are commonly possible.
  • Data is from NELS which is a nationally representative sample of high school students. The 1988 eighth grade cohort was followed at two-year intervals as the students passed through high school and entered post-secondary education. The author restricted the sample to respondents that identified as non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. The sample contained 14,681 individuals, among whom 8,743 claimed a college major by 1994.
  • The dependent variable was college major choice. This is based on a six-category classification for college majors. The categories are technical fields, life/health science fields, economics/business fields, social science/education fields, humanity/arts fields, and other fields.
  • The independent variables were gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status, family SES, and parental involvement. Family SES is a composite measure created by the NELS. It consists of both parents’ years of education, the Socioeconomic Index score of their occupations, and annual family income, which are equally weighted. To capture parental involvement, the author utilized both general parental involvement information and domain-specific involvement information. For general involvement, parents were asked how often they discussed seven school- or work-related topics with their children, including school course selection, school activities, things studied in class, grades, preparation for the ACT/SAT test, going to college, and job possibilities after high school (and at what grade these were asked).
  • The author created a series of dummy variables indicating whether students were sent to art class after school, were sent to computer class after school, or went to art or science museums with their parents. These measures were taken when students were in eighth grade. The control variables include three aspects of pre-college outcomes in math and English: achievement, attitude, and course taking.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:Links individual factors and its impacts on STEM.
Archives: K-16 STEM Abstracts