Sociologists have long used educational expectations to understand the complex mental processes underlying individuals' educational decision making. Yet, little research evaluates how students actually formulate their educational expectations. Status attainment theory asserts that students adopt their educational expectations early based on family…

We use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to estimate the effects of cognitive skills (measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test) and attitudinal/behavioral traits (a latent factor based on self-reported self-esteem, locus of control, educational aspirations and educational expectations) on career wage…

Longitudinal data from the National Youth Survey indicate that, in general, social control variables, such as attachment to family and educational aspirations, significantly predicted sexual activity among white adolescents, while strain variables, such as perceived inability to achieve educational goals, predicted sexual behavior of black…

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we identify parental age as influential in the parental provision of economic resources, social capital and cultural capital to adolescents, as well as in parental educational expectations for their children. At the bivariate level, the relationship is curvilinear, suggesting that…