How Mother and Father Support Affect Youths’ Interest in Computer Science

Authors

Jody Clarke-Midura, Utah State UniversityFollow
Frederick J. Poole, Utah State UniversityFollow
Katarina Pantic, Utah State UniversityFollow
Chongning Sun, Utah State UniversityFollow
Vicki Allan, Utah State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

Publisher

ACM

Publication Date

8-8-2018

First Page

215

Last Page

222

Abstract

Parental support is a predictor of children’s career interest and aspirations. However, mother and father support affects youth career choices differently. To understand how perceived mothers’ and fathers’ support affect career interest in computer science (CS), we developed two path models using both mother and father support gains to predict youths’ interest in CS. We hypothesized that perceived father’s and mother’s support would relate to youths’ interest in CS via youths’ perception of CS utility value as a mediator. We found that both mother and father support leads to interest in CS. However, father support was found to affect CS interest via the mediator utility-value beliefs. To provide explanations for these differences we used student interview data to explore how participants in our study perceived parental support.

Recommended Citation

Allan, Vicki, et al. “How Mother and Father Support Affect Youths’ Interest in Computer Science.” ACM Digital Library, 8 Aug. 2018, dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3230977.3231003.