A study was conducted to: determine the aspirations and capabilities of rural youth in selected low-income counties in Arkansas; relate aspirations, capabilities, and the discrepancy between the two to the experience background of the youths studied; and relate the youths' occupational plans to present and projected labor market requirements. The…

The status projections of high school sophomores residing in rural East Texas were surveyed in spring of 1972. Focus was on their aspirations and expectations for status attainment in occupation, education, income, and type of place of residence. In each area, four elements of status projections were examined: aspiration level, expectation level,…

A need existed for instruments to measure status isomorphs for either income or political influence in the process of status attainment. To provide a base on which to build further work, instruments were developed in this project by which to measure youth's aspirations for and their significant others' expectations for the youth's future levels of…

Recent studies have applied causal models to the formation of educational and occupational attitudes. Although some were conceived and conducted for purposes other than the analysis of status attainment processes, a powerful synthesizing perspective would be to treat them as studies of components of incomplete general attainment models. This study…

A sample of 176 Tennessee children and their mothers were studied in 1969 when the children were fifth or sixth graders and again in 1975 when they were eleventh or twelfth graders to determine changes in occupational and educational aspirations and expectations along with possible causes for such changes. Comparison of occupational aspirations…

Situational obstacles stemming from cultural and economic circumstances (migrant status, time away from school for work, etc.) were observed to have at least as much influence on the Mexican American child's educational and occupational aspirations as the more commonly stressed family interaction variables such as parental aspiration and emphasis…

One of a series on selected topics, this bibliography contains resource materials and research findings about aspirational needs of rural youth--including ethnic, male/female, and urban/rural comparisons. The 10 citations, published from 1966 to 1974, are drawn from "Resources in Education" (RIE), a monthly publication containing…

Questionnaire data gathered from 142 high school students in a rural Montana town were used to identify the sources of influence in setting occupational and educational goals and to analyze the amounts of information transmitted from various categories of significant others. Results showed that for both occupation and education, peers and,…

A process model which included the influences of social origin, encouragement, and the formation of adolescent period attitudes as antecedents of early marital and fertility behavior was constructed and evaluated using three-wave panel data obtained from 176 nonmetropolitan females from selected Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina high…

Contrary to recent national trends, enrollments at colleges of agriculture have increased 181% between 1963 and 1976, with an ever increasing proportion of agricultural students coming from urban backgrounds. During the spring of 1977, mail questionnaire data were collected from 3,175 undergraduate "ag" majors (93.8% White and 6.2%…

The specific objective was to study racial differences in the consistency dimension of desired status objects (aspirational frame of reference) and expected objects (anticipated frame of reference) of adolescent males from the rural South. Specific observations were made on (1) racial differences in consistency of aspirational frames of reference…

In an effort to determine whether there are differences in areas of residence that affect the aspirations and expectations of young people living therein, this study examined occupational and educational aspirations of 1,835 rural high school seniors from 3 sociocultural contexts in Kentucky: (1) a low-opportunity, rural-poverty area in central…

One of a series on selected topics, this bibliography of resource materials and research findings is drawn from ERIC documents; the 42 citations on rural youth cover expectations and aspirations about education, occupation, residence, marriage, and procreation (several are historical change studies), and focus on such influences as race, sex,…

Studies on U.S. rural youth indicate current regional and ethnic diversity; limited rural-urban differences; and some limited social change in terms of values, needs, and aspirations. The size of the rural youth population is considerable (25,013,948 out of a total youth population of 93,313,518 in 1970). The majority of rural youth are white…

In 2004, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania contracted with Pennsylvania State University to begin a longitudinal study of rural Pennsylvania school students to understand their future aspirations, the factors influencing these aspirations, whether their plans change as they age, and if they attain their goals and plans. The main research questions…