The Development and Validation of a Measure of Science Capital, Habitus, and Future Science Interests

Understanding science career aspirations: Factors predicting future science task value

“…The NextGen Scientist Surve y (NGS Survey) was developed as a means of understanding the access that youth have to factors related to science capital and family science habitus (Jones et al, 2020). The survey items fall into one of four categories: Science Experiences (13 items that assess the amount of time youth spent engaging in science outside of school, although 11 items which fit best were used for this sample), Science Achievement Value (9 items that assess confidence youth have in their ability to do well in science (self‐efficacy), perceived belief about their ability to learn science and whether they believed they are seen by others as someone who likes science (self‐concept)), Perceptions of Family Science Achievement Value (4 items that assess perceptions related to the degree parents and family find science interesting and valuable), and Future Science Task Value (3 items that measure interest and perceived importance and utility of science in the future).…”

“…The confirmatory factor analyses found acceptable internal consistency of at least 0.80 (Streiner, 2003) for each of the four factors Science Experiences 0.88, Science Expectancy Value (renamed here as Science Achievement Value ) 0.93, Family Science Achievement Value (renamed here Perceptions of Family Science Achievement Value ) 0.85, and Future Science Task Value 0.85. The four factors were shown to have metric invariance and partial scalar invariance for both gender and ethnicity subgroups (see Jones et al, 2020 for a full description of the factor structure). Table 2 includes sample NGS Survey items in each of the aforementioned construct categories.…”

“…The present study examined Science Achievement Value which includes an individual's levels of science self‐efficacy, including beliefs about how well one will do on a science task in the future, as well as their academic self‐concept, which includes beliefs about how well they are presently able to complete an academic task (Bong & Clark, 1999). Although science self‐efficacy and science self‐concept are related concepts (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020), researchers have defined self‐efficacy as related to confidence to successfully accomplish tasks in the future, whereas science self‐concept is viewed as happening in the moment and is influenced by comparisons of the self to others (e.g., “my friends think I am good in science,” e.g., NextGen Scientists Survey; Jones et al, 2020). In the current study, we measured both self‐efficacy and self‐concept to comprehensively capture students' science achievement value.…”

Constructing STEM identity: An expanded structural model for STEM identity research

“…Our curiosity in this sense derives from observations in our ongoing qualitative work that many of our participants did not decide on STEM careers until late in high school. In addition, our work differs from other quantitative assessments of capital (e.g., Chesnutt et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2020Jones et al, , 2021Moote et al, 2020) by looking at capital-related variables separately rather than as a composite score. This allows us to separate variables that are more clearly defined and less amenable (i.e., parental and maternal education) from those that are more open to interpretation in diverse cultural contexts and feasible in targets for intervention (i.e., perception of home support around science and family science talk).…”

Science capital

“…Jones et al (2020) trabalharam com o desenvolvimento e validação de uma medida de capital da ciência e interesse científico futuro com uma pesquisa com 889 jovens nas séries 6-8, devido ao baixo interesse na carreira de STEM pelos jovens. Eles desenvolvem a NextGen Scientist Survey 8 que mostrou quatro fatores correlacionados que influenciaram nas aspirações da carreira juvenil: valor da expectativa científica, experiências científicas, valor da tarefa de ciência no futuro e valores de conquistas em ciência da família.…”