Aspirations and Expectations Measures for Adolescents and Emerging Adults: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Year: 2020
Type: review
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: The present study aims to survey the theoretical background, factor structure and psychometric properties of measures that assess the aspirations and expectations of adolescents and emerging adults across different life domains.We searched three online databases (PubMed, PsycNET, and ProQuest) for relevant articles, using a string of search terms with the following four terminological cores: (1) age (adolescents, youths, etc...); (2) assessed psychological constructs (aspirations, expectations, etc...); (3) psychological measurement (scales, questionnaires, etc...); and (4) psychometric procedures (validation, reliability, etc...).Additionally, we searched the same online databases for articles containing the included measures name.Furthermore, we emailed the measures' authors asking for articles not included in the search.Only articles that included psychometric properties of measures that assessed future aspirations and/or expectations of participants aged between 12 and 30-year-old were included.From the 1,845 retrieved articles, 31 met the inclusion criteria reporting psychometric properties of eight measures.Data was extracted and assessed by two raters, and a third rater was accessed for a casting vote.The most frequent scales' languages were English and Spanish, and the most frequent data collection context was in the USA.We grouped the included scales according to their factorial structures' semantic similarities and found five different sorts of content: (1) prospective life domains; (2) future lifestyle domains; (3) positive and negative expectations; (4) career-focused domains; and(5) self/other focused domains.Evidence of internal structure validity and reliability were the only ones present in all of the analyzed studies.Findings suggest that the theoretical background for measuring aspirations and expectations has a direct impact on the content of items.Therefore, the choice of a measure for data collection must be based on specific research questions.
Author: Oliveira, Bruno Capão de
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6980060470