Using social cognitive career theory (SCCT), this study examined the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in an SCCT science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) model, with gender controlled for across the model. Results showed that higher SES covaried with lower perceived career barriers, and with greater mother, father, and peer support. In turn, higher SES also predicted greater outcome expectations but not self-efficacy. Efficacy predicted STEM career interests, choice goals, and choice actions (defined as intentions to take advanced math and science courses). Outcome expectations predicted interests but not goals or actions. Barriers, as well as, father and peer support, predicted efficacy, while mother support predicted outcome expectations. Results are discussed in light of the STEM career development among higher and lower SES adolescents.

This study was an investigation of the relationships between internalized self-criticism and depression and between comparative self-criticism and depression as these relationships are mediated by the fear of self-compassion, fear of compassion from others, self-compassion, and the perception that one is important to others. To examine these relationships, data were gathered via online survey methods from 206 university students at a large public Midwestern university in the United States. The Self-Criticism/Compassion Mediation Model, in which internalized and comparative self-criticism were both modeled to predict depression, was built and tested via structural equation modeling (SEM). In the presence of 4 competing models, this model effectively modeled relationships among the study variables. In the Self-Criticism/Compassion Mediation Model, the fear of self-compassion, and the perception that one is important to others serially mediated the relationship between comparative self-criticism and depression. Additionally, self-compassion partially mediated both the relationship between internalized self-criticism and depression, and the relationship between comparative self-criticism and depression. Implications include the use of the model as a guide to developing evidence-based practice for highly self-critical, depressed clients.

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