Undecided First-Year Students: A 25-Year Longitudinal Study
Abstract
First-year students who chose to enter a university undecided about a major were surveyed over a 25-year period to obtain a profile that could be used to target their changing educational and career advising needs. Entering students' responses over this period were consistent in terms of their demographic characteristics, their reasons for attending college, and their levels of undecidedness. Their levels of anxiety about choosing a major increased only slightly. When compared to a national profile of entering students, they did not differ significantly. The areas of academic and career interest they reported changed slightly, but over the years four areas were consistently chosen by the highest percentage of students. The type of advising help they requested remained consistent, with a few exceptions in later years. Differences emerged when relationships between levels of undecidedness and three of the variables were examined for the last three years of the survey.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Undecided students were more likely to identify occupational preparation or a desire to become educated as reasons for attending college.
“For example, undecided students were more likely to identify occupational preparation or a desire to become educated as reasons for attending college (Gordon & Steele, 2003).”
From Demographics, Purpose, and Dreams: Predicting Entering College as an Undecided Major Student (2023) · cites this paper as Gordon & Steele, 2003
Talking with students about career and major uncertainty eases the anxiety such uncertainty may create.
“easing the anxiety such uncertainty may create (Gordon & Steele, 2003;Hagstrom et al., 1997).”
From Demographics, Purpose, and Dreams: Predicting Entering College as an Undecided Major Student (2023) · cites this paper as Gordon & Steele, 2003
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 10 · Cited by 52
- Authors
- Gordon, V., & Steele, G.
- Venue
- Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition
- Published
- 2003-09-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 19-38
- ISSN
- 1053-203X (ISSN-L)
- 1542-3077
- OpenAlex
- W203675834
- Cited by
- 52
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 3.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition (publishedVersion)
- Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Career Development and Diversity
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education and Employability
- Keywords
- first-year students, academic advising, career guidance, student learning interest, career interest, student persistence
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
