Suchergebnisse

Educational transitions play a pivotal role in shaping educational careers, and ultimately social inequality. Whereas parental socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive ability have long been identified as key determinants of successful educational transitions, much less is known about the role of socio-emotional skills. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether Big Five personality traits predict success in the transition from secondary school to vocational education and training (VET) above and beyond SES, cognitive ability, and other covariates. Using data from Starting Cohort 4 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; N = 4,137), we defined seven indicators of successful transition: obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances for VET positions, starting a VET position, (the absence of) dropout intentions and actual dropout, final VET grade, and satisfaction with VET. The results revealed that some Big Five traits were incrementally associated with several indicators of transition success. Conscientiousness emerged as the single most relevant trait, predicting all the transition success indicators but 1 (dropout intentions). The other Big Five traits had much weaker and less consistent links with transition success. Extraversion predicted the final VET grade and obtaining a VET position; Agreeableness was linked to a higher risk of dropout. Openness and Emotional Stability had no incremental effects on transition success. There was also some evidence for both compensatory and synergistic interactive effects, with Openness moderating mainly the effects of parental SES (on dropout intentions, actual dropout, and number of acceptances), and Agreeableness moderating the effects of cognitive ability (on obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances, and satisfaction with VET). Although individual effect sizes were small, the Big Five's joint contribution to transition success was non-negligible, and often larger than that of sociodemographic characteristics and cognitive ability. Our results suggest a hitherto underappreciated contribution of personality to successful transitions to VET.

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills comprise a broad set of abilities that are essential for building and maintaining relationships, regulating emotions, selecting and pursuing goals, or exploring novel stimuli. Toward an improved SEB skill assessment, Soto and colleagues recently introduced the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI). Measuring 32 facets from 5 domains with 192 items (assessment duration: ~15 min), BESSI constitutes the most extensive SEB inventory to date. However, so far, BESSI exists only in English. In three studies, we comprehensively validated a novel German-language adaptation, BESSI-G. Moreover, we expanded evidence on BESSI in three ways by (1) assessing the psychometric properties of the 32 individual skill facets, in addition to their domain-level structure; (2) providing first insights into the temporal stabilities of the 32 facets over 1.5 and 8 months; and (3) investigating the domains' and facets' associations with intelligence, in addition to personality traits. Results show that BESSI-G exhibits good psychometric properties (unidimensionality, reliability, factorial validity). Its domain-level structure is highly similar to that of the English-language source version. The facets show high temporal stabilities, convergent validity with personality traits, and discriminant validity with fluid and crystallized intelligence. We discuss implications for research on SEB skills.

The German twin family study 'TwinLife' was designed to enhance our understanding of the development of social inequalities over the life course. The interdisciplinary project investigates mechanisms of social inequalities across the lifespan by taking into account psychological as well as social mechanisms, and their genetic origin as well as the interaction and covariation between these factors. Main characteristics of the study are: (1) a multidimensional perspective on social inequalities, (2) the assessment of developmental trajectories in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in a longitudinal design by using (3) a combination of a multi-cohort cross-sequential and an extended twin family design, while (4) capturing a large variation of behavioral and environmental factors in a representative sample of about 4,000 German twin families. In the present article, we first introduce the theoretical and empirical background of the TwinLife study, and second, describe the design, content, and implementation of TwinLife. Since the data will be made available as scientific use file, we also illustrate research possibilities provided by this project to the scientific community.