Beyond STEM attrition: changing career plans within STEM fields in college is associated with lower motivation, certainty, and satisfaction about one’s career

International Journal of STEM Education

Table 7 Logistic regression analyses predicting likelihood of changing career plans within STEM

Variable	B	S.E.	Wald	p	Odds Ratio
Intercept	−1.61	0.23
Gender	0.31	0.14	5.35	.021	1.37
Racially minoritized status	−0.24	0.17	1.98	.159	0.79
First-generation status	−0.12	0.15	0.68	.409	0.89
Year in school
Second vs. first	0.87	0.14	37.68	< .001	2.38
Third vs. first	1.12	0.15	56.66	< .001	3.07
Fourth vs. first	1.61	0.20	64.42	< .001	5.01
Other vs. first	2.62	0.43	36.85	< .001	13.69
Field of study
C.S.-related vs. Bio.-related	0.06	0.22	0.07	.793	1.06
Eng.-related vs. Bio.-related	0.38	0.18	4.35	.037	1.47
Other fields vs. Bio.-related	0.33	0.13	6.64	.010	1.39
College GPA	−0.07	0.06	1.38	.240	0.93

Plans Changing: Yes = 1, No = 0. Gender: Woman = 1, Man = 0. Racially Minoritized Status: Historically marginalized with respect to racial/ethnic identity in STEM = 1, Non-historically marginalized = 0. First-generation status: first-generation student = 1; non-first-generation student = 0. Year in School: Dummy codes representing each year versus the first year (focal year coded as 1, all other groups coded as 0, with first year as the reference group). Field of Study: Dummy codes representing each field of study versus biology-related fields of study (focal field of study coded as 1, all other fields of study coded as 0, with biology-related fields of study as the reference group). College GPA is standardized for analysis