ASPIRES Research - Longitudinal research project studying young people's science and career aspirations

ASPIRES is a longitudinal research project studying young people's science and career aspirations.

Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is an international priority for government, industry and the science education policy and practice community. There is widespread concern that participation in STEM needs to be improved for reasons of both national economic competitiveness and social equity.

The first phase of the ASPIRES study tracked the development of young people's science and career aspirations from age 10 to 14 (from 2009 to 2013). 

ASPIRES 2 continued to track young people until age 19, to understand the changing influences of the family, school, careers education and social identities and inequalities on young people's science and career aspirations. 

The third stage of the research, ASPIRES 3, will continue to track the young people as they move into adulthood and employment, from age 20 to 23. 

This project was first based at King’s College London, having moved to the UCL Institute of Education in March 2017. In 2019, Professor Louise Archer and her team were awarded the ESRC Celebrating Impact Panel’s Choice prize for this research. More recently, in 2022, the research group was awarded the Royal Society Athena Prize.