Development and validation of the Motivations for Career Choice Scale: illustrated empirically for adolescents’ aspired STEM careers in Australia and Germany

Motivations within the Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT) impact particular choices of career including STEM (e.g., Watt, Shapka et al., 2012), English-related careers (Watt, 2008), teaching (Watt and Richardson 2007) and trades (Powers, 2020). Measurements until now have highlighted the particular career of interest within the survey question stem or items. In our Motivations for Career Choice scale (MCC) we provide a measurement platform that can apply across career types to compare and contrast motivations. The MCC is a generalization and extension of the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT-)Choice scale. Prefaced by the stem, “It is important to me to have a career that…”, the MCC transposes SEVT constructs previously adopted in the FIT-Choice scale, adding features of the interpersonal environment. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis using two independent samples (1,225 grade 12 students in Australia, 1,152 grades 11–12 students in Germany) supported the theorized structure and established metric measurement invariance across contexts and language translations, with the MCC presenting as a promising measurement platform for researchers and policymakers interested to compare and contrast motivations for individuals aspiring to different types of career. We illustrate its application to adolescents’ gendered career aspirations in STEM subfields. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed.