Faculty advisors play an important role in the development of graduate students. One group for which the advising relationship has been shown to be especially crucial is women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We designed two studies to assess the advising alliance for women in STEM graduate programs using the student version of the Advisor Working Alliance Inventory (AWAI) along with additional content developed by our team. Study 1 (N ¼ 76) was developed to assess item performance and the initial structure with a pilot sample of undergraduate and graduate students in science and engineering. Study 2 (N ¼ 293) was designed to assess the advising alliance exclusively for women in STEM graduate programs. Our results indicated that an alternative alliance structure may exist for women in STEM and in Study 2 two factors emerged, which indicated that instrumental support and psychosocial support are two salient factors for women in STEM.

Data of 306 Caucasian American, 284 Asian American, and 259 Latino/a American college students were analyzed in this study to test a modified version of Lent and Brown's (2006, 2008) satisfaction model in the academic context. In addition to the full set of variables hypothesized in the original model, the modified academic satisfaction model also included independent and interdependent self-construals to represent one's cultural orientations. Comparisons between the hypothesized model and 2 alternative models showed that direct paths from extraversion and emotional stability added significantly to the predictions of academic satisfaction and life satisfaction for all 3 racial/ethnic groups while those from independent and interdependent self-construals also had the same effects for Latino/a American students. The hypothesized model offered excellent fit to the data of all 3 racial/ethnic groups. Consistent with theoretical prediction, academic supports, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, or goal progress formed pathways that mediated the relations of personality traits and self-construals to academic satisfaction or life satisfaction across 3 groups. Although full measurement equivalence (configural invariance and metric invariance) was observed, 4 structural paths and 16 indirect effects differed significantly by race/ethnicity. Most of these differences in structural paths and indirect effects occurred between Caucasian Americans and Asian Americans. On balance, findings of the study provided evidence for the cross-racial/ethnic validity of the modified academic satisfaction model while identifying racial/ethnic differences that might have useful clinical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record

The current study examined the psychometric support of the Career Clusters Interest Survey (CCIS) that provides subscales scores for the 16 Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) career clusters in a sample of 203 college students. Reliability of the subscales was supported with respect to internal consistency and 2-week stability estimates. A principal components analysis (PCA) of the subscale scores revealed that the CCIS yielded only two factors, a general one and one capturing People/Things. Correlation of these components with interest scores from the Personal Globe Inventory (PGI) revealed that the CCIS scales captured only the People/ Things dimension while not covering the Data/Ideas dimension or prestige. So, the instrument represents a very restricted range of interests. In addition, the agreement of the cluster scores from the CCIS with those provided by the PGI was very low. So, reliability support was provided but questions about the validity of the CCIS with respect to its coverage of the interest domain were yielded. Using the CCIS to guide students could result in a very restricted examination of occupations.The Career Clusters Interest Survey (CCIS) is a unique career interest survey developed to provide interest information to users that corresponds with the 16 career clusters created by the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE). These 16 clusters are (a) Agriculture, food and natural resources, (b) Architecture and construction, (c) Arts, audio/video (A/V) technology, and communications, (d) Business, management, and administration, (e)

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