The American Chemistry Society divided the employment world for chemical professionals into several sectors, such as industry in general and high-tech in particular, academia, government, and private enterprise. Nowadays, fewer students, especially female, choose to study and later to pursue a chemistry-related career and persist in it. Our research is based on the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which provides explanations on how career and academic interests is developed and how career choices are turned into actions. Accordingly, our goals were to explore chemists' perceptions of chemistry-related professions and find the factors that influence choosing chemistry as a major in high school and higher education. Our participants included about 70 chemists and chemical engineers working in industry or research organizations. All the participants had chemistry related degrees. The research was conducted using a mixed-methods approach. Data was collected via an online questionnaire developed for the current study, and contained a combination of 38 closed-ended questions collected from previous studies. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with seven participants who described their experiences as students and from their careers in chemistry-related industry. From these self-reports, we identified factors that had influenced the participants to pursue chemistry-related careers: self-efficacy, aspirations and barriers, personal factors, career outcomes and environmental factors. Our findings revealed that the Self-efficacy is the most influential factor regarding choosing a chemistry-related career. It was also found to be positively correlated with Environmental factors. Our study aimed to provide insight into the motivational factors, which inform one’s decision to learn chemistry at various levels, and then enter a chemistry-related career. We discuss the relationship between the factors and recommend policy makers and chemical educators how to encourage high school students to choose chemistry as major and women undergraduate students to choose and remain in chemistry-related careers

Why do chemists and chemical engineers choose these professions

256th National Meeting (2018)

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