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How Mother And Father Support Affect Youths’ Interest In Computer Science, Jody Clarke-Midura, Frederick J. Poole, Katarina Pantic, Chongning Sun, Vicki Allan

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

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 …