Abstract
Adolescents’ self-esteem is an important indicator of their successful development and their well-being. This paper investigates the impact of educational trajectories on the development of women’s and men’s self-esteem from mid to late adolescence in Switzerland. We posit that cooling-out processes after educational failure, leading to a decrease in self-esteem, are more frequent among women than men attributable to particular institutional characteristics of the stratified educational system in Switzerland and gender differences in the salience of social comparison. Analyses are based on the middle cohort of the Swiss Survey of Children and Youth (COCON). The first three survey waves (2006–2009) were conducted when the respondents were 15, 16 and 18 years old. Self-esteem development was examined by using latent growth-curve models. Analyses show a boost of self-esteem both at the mean-level and the intra-individual level for all adolescents. However, the impact of educational success or failure in the years following the transition to post-compulsory education differs by gender. The evidence suggests that women’s self-esteem development is more affected by educational attainment than men’s.
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Notes
- 1.
As most adolescents aspire for a post-compulsory training position, a direct transition from compulsory school to the labour market is nowadays rather uncommon (Böni 2003).
- 2.
Three quarters of those adolescents who have been channelled into an intermediate solution subsequently find a training position in the certifying post-compulsory educational system, whereby the majority is in vocational training and the minority attends schools with a general educational program (Hupka 2003). According to Hupka-Brunner et al. (2010), the chances for entry into post-compulsory education fall swiftly 2 years after having finished the lower-secondary level.
- 3.
Compared to other European countries, there are also substantially fewer full-time vocational schools for academically low-achieving students in Switzerland (Hupka-Brunner et al. 2010, p. 13).
- 4.
This research is conducted at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zürich (Director, Marlis Buchmann) and is generously supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
- 5.
Drop-out analysis, run with a logistic regression model including the master sample at time point one and the sample at time point three, indicate an underrepresentation of adolescents with lower- and middle-level of lower secondary education. In addition, parents without post-compulsory education are underrepresented. For this reason, the sample weights are applied.
- 6.
‘I certainly feel useless at times.’ ‘On the whole, I’m satisfied with myself.’ ‘All in all, I’m inclined to feel that I’m a failure.’ COCON assesses self-esteem at the age of 15 with five items, at the age of 16 with seven items and at the age of 18 with five items. Therefrom, three items showed to have acceptable reliabilities over the three measurement points.
- 7.
Not all adolescents with ‘regular’ transitions completed compulsory schooling at the age of 15. 53.8 % made the transition at the age of 15, 28.9 % at the age of 16, and 5.1 % at the age of 17. These different transition time points are due to late school enrollment or grade retentions.
- 8.
The percentage of missing values reaches a maximum of 4.3 % (Father’s educational attainment).
- 9.
Of all adolescents serving apprenticeships, six completed a 2-year basic vocational training. At the age of 18, two of them already had entered the labour force.
- 10.
The Mauchly-test (p < 0.05) checking equality of the variances of the differences between the three time points reveals a moderate violation of sphericity. We report the Greenhouse-Geisser corrected values to overcome reservations about sphericity (Rasch et al. 2006).
- 11.
Analyses were also conducted without weighting factors. The results showed similar effects.
- 12.
The fact that this educational trajectory type also includes young women who dropped out of post-compulsory education after the age of 16 only may as well contribute to the increase in self-esteem between the ages of 15 and 16.
- 13.
Tukey post-hoc comparisons of the five groups indicated that adolescents in intermediate solutions (m = 4.35, 95 % CI[4.22, 4.49]) have significantly lower self-esteem assessments than adolescents in apprenticeships (m = 4.58, 95 % CI[4.47, 4.69]) p = 0.000, adolescents in school based-education early transition (m = 4.76, 95 % CI[4.57, 4.96]) p = 0.000 and adolescents in school-based education (m = 4.56, 95 % CI[4.43, 4.68]) p = 0.054. The difference in self-esteem between adolescents in intermediate solutions and adolescents without certifying educational position was not statistically significant.
- 14.
Calculations with manifest (observed) scales for self-esteem (presented here) generated better model fit indices than with latent constructs (Curves-of-factor-model; Duncan et al. 2006).
- 15.
A three-factor model with non-linear trajectories (e.g., inclusion of quadratic effects) estimates three variances, three covariances, and three means for the constant, resulting in zero degrees of freedom. Hence, there are not sufficient degrees of freedom available for the evaluation of the model fit (Duncan and Duncan 2004, p. 343).
- 16.
Compared to mother’s, father’s educational attainment turned out to be the more significant indicator. A more precise distinction of father’s educational attainment did not yield a better model fit, however.
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Bayard, S., Staffelbach, M., Fischer, P., Buchmann, M. (2014). Upper-Secondary Educational Trajectories and Young Men’s and Women’s Self-Esteem Development in Switzerland. In: Keller, A., Samuel, R., Bergman, M., Semmer, N. (eds) Psychological, Educational, and Sociological Perspectives on Success and Well-Being in Career Development. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8911-0_3
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