– Overall, large gender differences in career plans were found, with males showing far more interest particularly in engineering, whereas females were more attracted to careers in health and medicine during their high school years.
– The key factor predicting STEM career interest at the end of high school was interest at the start of high school.
– Experiences and attitudes developed prior to high school make a crucial contribution to the current disparity in interest in STEM careers exhibited by female students.
– There was an additional effect of gender, indicating both a lower retention of STEM career interest among females and a greater difficulty in attracting females to STEM fields during high school.
– During the high school years, the percentage of males interested in a STEM career remained stable (from 39.5 to 39.7), whereas for females it declined from 15.7 to 12.7.
– The students’ initial specific (disciplinary) career interests were found to influence the stability of their interest in a STEM career, with those interested in physics careers at the start of high school having the highest retention in STEM
– High school years are characterized neither by overwhelming stability nor by total volatility of career interest, but by a complex mixture of both.