Determinants of Aspiration in Secondary School Students

This paper examines the relationship between the reference group, influences of parents, teachers and peers, and the vocational aspirations of secondary school students, taking account of differences in sex, social class, mental ability and home environment. It uses a sample of 704 student, of ages 16 and 17 years, drawn from four metropolitan senior high schools in Western Australia. Regression analysis indicates that approximately two‐thirds of the variance in boys' vocational aspirations, and half the variance in girls' vocational aspirations, is accounted for by a model which uses as predictors social class, mental ability, home environment, teacher and parent expectations and peer aspirations. Further analysis, using step‐wise techniques, shows that the influences of parents and teachers—in that order—are most important, as intervening variables, between the contextual variables of social class, mental ability and home environment, and the dependent variable of aspirations.