What Do They Want in Life?: The Life Goals of a Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Generational Sample of High School Seniors

By Esther S Chang, Chuansheng Chen, E. Greenberger, D. Dooley, J. Heckhausen. 2006

93 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study investigated ethnic as well as gender and generational similarities and differences in the life goals among graduating high-school seniors. Adolescents came from six ethnic groups: White, African, Mexican, Other Latino, Filipino, and East/Southeast Asian Americans. Their self-articulated medium-range life goals were grouped into 8 major categories such as occupational, educational, familial, and material goals. Group differences in various aspects of future plans, such as priorities given to different life goals, time frame of attainment, and perceived controllability over their attainment, were also examined. Hypothesized group differences based on current social realities and small-scale qualitative studies on ethnic minorities were not found; there were very few ethnic, gender, and generational differences in adolescents’ life goals. All groups reported a higher priority for, earlier expected attainment of, and more control over their medium-range educational and occupational goals than their family-related and material goals. Further, long-term educational and occupational aspirations were high across all groups. There were moderate ethnic differences in educational expectations and none for corresponding career expectations. Thus, current inequalities in educational and occupational attainments across ethnic groups were only partially reflected in the life goals of adolescents on the brink of graduating from high school.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1bb2b6659faa7572e0e18635f3d96975a9a8d95

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Safety Research

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Adolescent goal content and pursuit: A review of the literature from the past 16 years. (2008, methodology): “In some cases similar results were obtained regardless of elicitation method while in other studies findings depended on method of goal-elicitation employed (e.g. Chang et al., 2006).”
Understanding Career Aspirations Among Young Women (2016, background): “surprisingly common practice in both psychological and sociological research (Beal & Crockett, 2010; Chang et al., 2006; Cook et al., 1996; Dubow et al., 2006).”