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The authors examine the role of teenage career aspirations in predicting later outcomes, with a particular focus on young adolescent males and females who show an interest in SET (science, engineering, and technology) careers. The chapter contains the results of the secondary analysis carried by the authors on the British Youth Survey, which is part of the British Household Panel Survey. Drawing on data from a recent cohort, the authors investigated trends in aspirations over time. The analysis focuses on four research questions: (1) identifying young people's future aspirations, more specifically their aspirations to get into SET and the ways in which these relate to family background and gender; (2) examining whether an early interest in science leads to having a SET job as an adult; (3) examining the extent to which young people who aspire to a career in SET may be seeking to reproduce family patterns by following in the footsteps of the parents; and (4) looking at how those young people who express and interest in SET speak of their career ambitions in relation to family aspirations.

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