Predicting Undergraduate Music Majors’ Academic Adjustment and Persistence Intentions
Predicting Undergraduate Music Majors’ Academic Adjustment and Persistence Intentions
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Date
2021
Authors
Cygrymus, Emily Rose
Advisor
Lent, Robert W
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Abstract
The vocational/counseling psychology literature has devoted limited attention to factors thatpromote or hinder the career development of musicians. To address this gap, the current study
adopted social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as a framework to examine the experiences of
musicians at a formative point in their development – the first few years of college, during which
many would-be musicians either confirm or abandon their career plans. This study combines
features of SCCT’s well-being and choice models to explore social cognitive and personality
factors that might predict satisfaction with, and intended persistence in, undergraduate music
majors. In the current study, I tested a number of the models’ central predictions in the context of
music major education. In particular, I hypothesized that academic adjustment, as indexed by
academic domain satisfaction and stress, would be predicted by favorable levels of music major-
relevant self-efficacy, outcome expectations, social support, goal progress, and trait affect. I also
hypothesized that academic adjustment would, in turn, predict intentions to persist in the music
curriculum beyond the first two years of college. In addition to their indirect links through
satisfaction, self-efficacy and outcome expectations were posited to produce direct links to
persistence intentions. Participants were 260 first- and second-year undergraduate music majors.
The hypothesized model produced excellent fit to the data and accounted well for variation in
both music major satisfaction and persistence intentions. With a few exceptions (e.g., a non-
significant direct path from outcome expectations to persistence intentions), most of the path
coefficients were statistically significant and in the expected direction. These findings suggest
that this adaptation of the SCCT well-being and choice models offers a useful framework from
which to study the academic satisfaction and persistence intentions of music majors.