Role Outlook Study, 1964-1975

The purpose of this study was to follow the career plans and development of female college students. The study focused on students' yearly impressions of college, the development of their aspirations for after college, and influences that encouraged or inhibited career plans. Data were collected in a four-wave panel study from 1964-1968. The original class consisted of 188 first-year female students, 58% of whom remained at the college for all four years. Of the continuing four-year group, 87 students participated in all phases of the panel study. Each fall the sample of 87 women filled out questionnaires, including a few open-ended questions. Each spring a different subsample was interviewed, except during their senior year, when all 87 women were interviewed. Questionnaires and interviews charted patterns of choice and change of attitudes toward major, college life, life difficulties and satisfactions, hopes for graduate school, work motivation and preference, pursuing a career during child-rearing years, their parents, child care, marriage, and domestic division of labor. In 1975, the 64 participants for whom addresses could be obtained were mailed a follow-up questionnaire that assessed post-college education and job history, family characteristics, lifestyle features, the extent to which aspirations had been fulfilled, and aspirations for the future. The Murray Research Archive has numeric data files from this study.