A study examined the relationship between the self-efficacy and career aspirations of 37,942 11th-grade students across the state of Pennsylvania. Using Albert Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, which states that the level and strength of self-efficacy of an individual will determine (1) whether or not the individual will initiate coping behavior, (2) the amount of effort that the individual will expend, and (3) the length of time that the individual will sustain coping efforts in the face of obstacles, the study compared the career aspirations of high school juniors from rural, urban, and suburban areas based on whether the students were from traditional, dual-career, or single-parent family units. Pennsylvania's 1981 Educational Quality Assessment Program, was used to gather data for the study. The suburban students were consistently the most self-efficacious, followed by the urban and then by the rural youth as the least self-efficacious. For familial situations, dual-career families proved to be the most self-efficacious followed by traditional and, finally, by single-parent families. Females were consistently less self-efficacious than males with the exception of females from single-parent families. (This dissertation includes 40 tables, the assessment instrument, and a chart dealing with condition variables.) (MN)