Should I Stay or Should I Go? Career Choice Intentions of Students with Family Business Background

Personal and motivational patterns of intentional founders have been researched in great depth; however, antecedents to career choices of intentional successors have been conspicuously missing in entrepreneurship research. By drawing on theory of planned behavior, we investigate how intentional founders, successors, and employees differ in terms of locus of control and entrepreneurial self-efficacy as well as independence and innovation motives. We find that transitive likelihood of career intent depends on degree of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the independence motive. Unexpectedly, we see that high levels of internal locus of control lead to a preference of employment, which challenges traditional entrepreneurship research and suggests that the feasibility of an entrepreneurial career path does not automatically make it desirable. Our findings suggest that students with family business background are pessimistic about being in control in an entrepreneurial career, but optimistic about their efficacy to pursue an entrepreneurial career.

Hidden school dropout among immigrant students: a cross-sectional study

Actual school dropout among immigrant youth has been addressed in a number of studies, but research on hidden school dropout among immigrant students is rare. Thus, the objective of this paper is to analyze hidden school dropout among primary school students with an immigrant background. The analyses were performed using survey data of 1186 immigrant students in Swiss primary schools. Our results show that immigrant students’ academic achievement, their attitudes towards school-related values, and the quality of their relationships with classmates and teachers were significant predictors of their disengagement during classes. Moreover, our findings strongly suggest that those predictors that are important for actual school dropout are crucial for hidden school dropout as well. We conclude that low-achieving immigrant youth who do not value school and who have poor relationships with teachers and peers are especially at risk of hidden and, eventually, of actual school dropout.

Quality assurance of simulated patient feedback in communication training for fourth-year medical students

Introduction In our program, simulated patients (SPs) give feedback to medical students in the course of communication skills training. To ensure effective training, quality control of the SPs’ feedback should be implemented. At other institutions, medical students evaluate the SPs’ feedback for quality control (Bouter et al., 2012). Thinking about implementing quality control for SPs’ feedback in our program, we wondered whether the evaluation by students would result in the same scores as evaluation by experts. Methods Consultations simulated by 4th-year medical students with SPs were video taped including the SP’s feedback to the students (n=85). At the end of the training sessions students rated the SPs’ performance using a rating instrument called Bernese Assessment for Role-play and Feedback (BARF) containing 11 items concerning feedback quality. Additionally the videos were evaluated by 3 trained experts using the BARF. Results The experts showed a high interrater agreement when rating identical feedbacks (ICCunjust=0.953). Comparing the rating of students and experts, high agreement was found with regard to the following items: 1. The SP invited the student to reflect on the consultation first, Amin (= minimal agreement) 97% 2. The SP asked the student what he/she liked about the consultation, Amin = 88%. 3. The SP started with positive feedback, Amin = 91%. 4. The SP was comparing the student with other students, Amin = 92%. In contrast the following items showed differences between the rating of experts and students: 1. The SP used precise situations for feedback, Amax (=maximal agreement) 55%, Students rated 67 of SPs’ feedbacks to be perfect with regard to this item (highest rating on a 5 point Likert scale), while only 29 feedbacks were rated this way by the experts. 2. The SP gave precise suggestions for improvement, Amax 75%, 62 of SPs’ feedbacks obtained the highest rating from students, while only 44 of SPs’ feedbacks achieved the highest rating in the view of the experts. 3. The SP speaks about his/her role in the third person, Amax 60%. Students rated 77 feedbacks with the highest score, while experts judged only 43 feedbacks this way. Conclusion Although evaluation by the students was in agreement with that of experts concerning some items, students rated the SPs’ feedback more often with the optimal score than experts did. Moreover it seems difficult for students to notice when SPs talk about the role in the first instead of the third person. Since precision and talking about the role in the third person are important quality criteria of feedback, this result should be taken into account when thinking about students’ evaluation of SPs’ feedback for quality control. Bouter, S., E. van Weel-Baumgarten, and S. Bolhuis. 2012. Construction and Validation of the Nijmegen Evaluation of the Simulated Patient (NESP): Assessing Simulated Patients’ Ability to Role-Play and Provide Feedback to Students. Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges

Test anxiety, self-control, and knowledge retrieval in secondary school students

Es wurde kürzlich gezeigt, dass die Stärke des Zusammenhangs zwischen Angst und Leistung von der momentan vorhandenen Selbstkontrollkraft abhängt. Wir untersuchten an einer Stichprobe aus Wirtschaftsschülern (N = 136), ob dieser Befund auf den Abruf von Wissen generalisierbar ist. Die Leistungsängstlichkeit der Teilnehmenden wurde erfasst und deren Selbstkontrollkraft experimentell manipuliert, woraufhin sie einen standardisierten Wortschatztest bearbeiteten. Während das Wissen nicht von der Leistungsängstlichkeit oder der Selbstkontrollkraft abhing, sagte die Interaktion aus beiden Variablen das gezeigte Wissen vorher. Übereinstimmend mit früheren Studien fiel die Leistung von Schülern mit niedriger Selbstkontrollkraft umso geringer aus, je leistungsängstlicher sie waren. Bei Schülern mit hoher Selbstkontrollkraft hingen die Leistungsängstlichkeit und die Wortschatzleistung hingegen nicht zusammen. Wir interpretieren dieses Muster dergestalt, dass Leistungsängstlichkeit den Wissensabruf nur dann behindert, wenn Selbstkontrolle nicht zur Kompensierung angstbezogener Aufmerksamkeitsdefizite herangezogen werden kann. Die Befunde implizieren, dass gründliche Vorbereitung keine guten Testnoten garantiert.