Research on public attitudes toward science and technology policy has relied on surveys taken at single points in time. These surveys fail to indicate how these attitudes develop or change. In this study, we use data from the Longitudinal Study of American Life that has followed a national sample of Generation X for 33 years-from middle school to midlife. We demonstrate that the critical period for the formation of attitudes toward science and technology is the 15-18 years after high school-college, work, family, and career. The attitudes formed in this period remain stable for most individuals during midlife. This work provides an important perspective for scientists, engineers, and the leadership of the scientific community in their efforts to foster positive attitudes toward science and technology and to understand the roots of concerns and reservations about science.

The public acceptance of evolution remains a contentious issue in the United States. Numerous investigations have used national cross-sectional studies to examine the factors associated with the acceptance or rejection of evolution. This analysis uses a 33-year longitudinal study that followed the same 5000 public-school students from grade 7 through midlife (ages 45-48) and is the first to do so in regard to evolution. A set of structural equation models demonstrate the complexity and changing nature of influences over these three decades. Parents and local influences are strong during the high school years. The combination of post-secondary education and occupational and family choices demonstrate that the 15 years after high school are the switchyards of life.

Despite the well-documented negative implications of math anxiety on math learning, a scarcity of theoryguided, long-term longitudinal research limits knowledge about how math anxiety develops over time. Guided by the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions (Pekrun, 2006), the present study addresses this gap by examining (1) how math anxiety develops in tandem with the development of control and value appraisals across secondary schooling, and (2) how these three constructs co-develop in relation to characteristics of home and school contexts. We used growth mixture modeling to investigate how math anxiety, math self-concept (a frequently examined indicator of control appraisal), and math utility value (one dimension of math value) develop in parallel in a sample of 3116 adolescents, who were assessed annually across middle and high school. We identified three trajectory classes: a stable class, characterized by stably modest math anxiety, high math selfconcept, and high math utility value, a linear change class, characterized by increasing math anxiety and decreasing math self-concept and utility value, and a fluctuating class, characterized by curvilinear changes in math anxiety, math self-concept, and math utility value. Parental academic support and teacher bias differentiated the stable class from the fluctuating class at the transition to middle school, and from the linear change class at the transition to high school. Our findings point to the heterogeneous contributions of control and value appraisals towards the development of math anxiety and highlight the importance of investigating multiple dimensions of the socio-ecological context at different stages of math anxiety development.

Ansolabehere and Hersh and others have examined the reported voting behavior of survey respondents using a variety of validation methods, including matching with national voter files provided by outside vendors. This analysis provides the first examination of a thirty-year national longitudinal study and compares the insights obtained from this longitudinal analysis to two 2016 national cross-sectional studies of voting behavior using structural equation modeling. We find that respondents of the longitudinal study overreport at lower rates than respondents in our 2016 samples, and the traditional predictors of overreporting such as political interest, engagement, and partisanship predict overreporting among respondents in both our longitudinal and 2016 short-term panel studies, but our longitudinal data include novel predictors of overreporting such as parent socialization factors. We conclude with a discussion of the phenomenon of overreporting in surveys and how survey accuracy becomes increasingly important for both the public and policymakers in an era of decreasing trust in institutions and expertise.

Students who are highly anxious about mathematics-related activities generally exhibit lower mathematics achievement and motivation compared to their less anxious counterparts. Despite negative implications of mathematics anxiety (MA) on mathematics learning, there is a paucity of research examining how MA develops over time. Using the Longitudinal Study of American Youth dataset (N = 3116), the present study investigated two main questions regarding the development of MA in secondary school: (1) Is the development of MA characterized by a heterogeneous subset of growth trajectories? (2) How are time-varying personal and environmental factors (e.g., mathematics achievement; perceptions of math teachers) related to specific MA growth trajectories? Student MA was repeatedly assessed in six annual waves spanning across middle and high school. Using growth mixture modeling, we identified four growth trajectories of MA: (1) The non-anxious group that exhibited chronically low MA; (2) The highly anxious group which displayed moderately high MA over time; (3) The resilient group that exhibited high initial MA that steadily decreased over time; and (4) The vulnerable group that reported low initial MA that drastically increased over time. In addition, significant differences in the development of mathematics achievement, personality hardiness, and perceptions of mathematics teachers were found in these four MA groups. Findings highlight heterogeneity in the development of MA, identify middle school as a critical period for MA development, and emphasize the importance of examining developmental changes in cognitive, personality, and environmental factors to help clarify distinct MA trajectories across middle and high school.

Economic downturns are known to spark periods of increased enrolment in traditional educational pursuits. The current study leverages 30-year longitudinal data from the Longitudinal Study of American Life (LSAL; N=1,556) to examine individual characteristics and experiences in adolescence, just prior to the Great Recession, and during it, to understand why some individuals chose to pursue new education or training in response to the recession whereas others did not. Indicators from adolescence include measures of self-esteem, locus of control, persistence, achievement in mathematics and achievement in science and were collected from 1987 to 1993. inclusive. Pre-recession indicators include level of education, occupational and marital status and were collected in 2007. Indicators of the impact of the recession were collected retrospectively in 2014 and include whether a job was lost, whether work hours were reduced, and whether there was difficulty making rent/mortgage payments. Binary logistic regression identified persistence in adolescence, pre-recession education level, reporting reduced hours and difficulty paying rent/mortgage during the recession as associated with the likelihood of pursuing new education during the recession. A follow-up analysis investigated whether the pursuit of additional education/training in response to the recession predicted the likelihood of being employed in 2017. Results indicate that obtaining new education during the recession was associated with later employment status, but the significance and direction of the effect depends on pre-recession education level. Implications of this longitudinal, life course analysis are discussed in addition to recommendation for future directions.