Ambition and status attainment in the early career development of rural young adults

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess empirically a status attainment model of career ambition and career-related preferences for four rural race-sex groups. The basic concepts throughout the study were "aspiration," "expectation" and "attainment." They were made operational according to attitudinal orientations and statuses during late adolescence and early adulthood. The study model identified a career development-status attainment process that began with the structural influence of familial socioeconomic status on the formation of adolescent career and career-related preferences. The career preference was ambition, a factor analytic construct of educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Career-related preferences were residential expectations, marital plans, and fertility expectations. In early adulthood, career statuses were identified as educational attainment, residence, marital status, and fertility. The dependent variable in the model was adult ambition. The data were obtained from interviews conducted in five states--Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas-- during 1966, 1968, and 1972. Altogether, 246 Black males, 202 Black females, 364 White males, and 240 White females were in the panel of respondents studied. Several techniques were employed to analyze the data. Analyses of variance were used for the testing of race, sex, race-sex interaction differences for each variable in the model. Factor analysis was used to construct composite measures of social origins' socioeconomic status, and of adolescent and adult ambitions. In process analyses, path analysis was employed to evaluate tested causal model processes and to partition variable influences into direct and indirect effects. At the most general level of interpretation, the results indicated that a common model existed among Blacks and Whites of both sexes. The major processes in this model were of two types. The "career ambition process" causally related social origin status to the formation of adolescent ambition. Although its effect was greater for Whites than for Blacks, social origin status was positively related to adolescent ambition for all subgroups...