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FACTORS INFLUENCING SECONDARY STUDENTS’ INTENTION TO STUDY

STEM

Article · June 2023

DOI: 10.24191/BA/v7i1/79462

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 FACTORS INFLUENCING SECONDARY STUDENTS’ INTENTION TO
STUDY STEM

NINALYN FRIDRICT1, SHIRLEY ARVILLA ANDREW2*, MARYAM QAAMEELAH OTHMAN3,

ABDUL AZIZ LAI MOHD FIKRI LAI4 & AJIS LEPIT5
1,3,4
Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA Sabah Branch, Kota
Kinabalu Campus
2,5
Faculty of Applied Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA Sabah Branch, Kota Kinabalu
Campus
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
The percentage of Malaysian students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(STEM) is less than 60%, as highlighted by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and
Innovation (MOSTI). STEM talent is essential as the catalyst for the development of a country.
The vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations to produce new
science and technology that are sustainable, affordable, and safe, could be achieved by
encouraging students to take courses in science and technology. One of the universities in
Sabah has taken the initiative to conduct a STEM outreach programme at SMK Tongod during
the Imbak Canyon Scientific Expedition 2022 to promote STEM. The study was conducted to
identify the factors that influence the intention of secondary students to pursue STEM
education. The theory underpinning the present study was the Theory of Planned Behaviour
(TPB). The dependent variable was students’ intention to study STEM, and the independent
variables were attitude towards STEM, normative social influences, and self-efficacy. The data
were collected using questionnaires, which were distributed to 50 secondary students. The
data were analysed using the SmartPLS. The findings have important implications. Parents,
educators, and society can influence students’ attitudes towards STEM education.

Keywords: STEM, intention, attitude, Theory of Planned Behaviour, SmartPLS

Introduction
STEM fields are critical drivers of economic growth and national development. However,
most countries worldwide are facing problems recruiting individuals into STEM industries,
and Malaysia is no exception. To ensure the country has an adequate supply of talent in

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STEM fields, the percentage of students choosing STEM education needs to be increased to
60 percent, as targeted by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI)
(Bernama, 2021, October 9). The vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of
the United Nations, which is to produce new science and technology that are sustainable,
affordable, and safe, could be achieved by cultivating science and technology, thus
developing a society that supports science and technology (U.N.D.P., 2022).

Researchers from all over the globe have looked into the factors that influence students'
decisions to major in STEM fields of study. There are many factors that influence the
percentage of students who choose STEM education. The factors can be a lack of interest,
background, environmental factors, intrinsic factors of the individual, and so on. (Halim et al.,
2018; Ismail et al., 2019). A comprehensive analysis of the UK literature on the variables
affecting young people's educational options in STEM fields was conducted by Tripney et al.
(2010). They found that Asian students were more likely to continue studying science or
mathematics after the age of compulsory education. Additionally, they revealed that the key
deterrents to choosing STEM subjects for students were students’ aptitude, and their lack of
interest. In contrast, the main motivators for choosing STEM subjects for students were
usefulness, ability, enjoyment, and complementary subjects. Additionally, they found that girls
are more likely than boys to attribute their decision to their interest in or enjoyment of the field
of study rather than their level of trust in STEM-related fields. Secondary students show
interests in STEM fields (Wiebe et al., 2018). Hence, this might show that secondary
students are better suited to respond to research on the connection between attitude and
intention to pursue STEM. According to Kurban and Cabrera's research (2019), STEM
readiness and students' interest in mathematics and science have a direct impact on their
intention to major in STEM. Additionally, socioeconomic position, mathematical aptitude,
parental influence, self-efficacy, and interest, have a direct impact on STEM readiness.
Therefore, the present research was to determine the variables that affect secondary
students' intentions to pursue STEM education.

Objective
The primary objective of this research is to identify the factors influencing secondary
students' intentions of pursuing STEM education in Tongod District. We are interested in
determining the impacts of three variables—attitude towards STEM, parental support, and
confidence in pursuing STEM education—on students' intentions for pursuing STEM
education. Additionally, this study seeks to pinpoint the element that has the biggest impact
on students' intentions to pursue STEM fields. With our findings, we aim to assist educators,
school officials, policymakers, and parents in empowering students to continue their studies
in the STEM stream.

The research questions were: What variables affect secondary school students' intention to
pursue STEM fields of study? What is the main element influencing secondary students'
intention to pursue STEM studies?

Methodology
This study was guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour or TPB (Jeffries et al.,2019; Malik
et al.,c2021). TPB is a conceptual model that aims to describe behaviours (Fishbein and
Ajzen, 2010). It offers a helpful and solid conceptual framework to research complicated
behaviours. According to the theory, a person’s desire to engage in a specific behaviour can
be used to anticipate that behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). Hence, based on this theory, there are
three main factors that influence intention: attitude towards behaviour, subjective norms, and
perceived behavioural control (Ajzen, 1991).

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In addition to the existing variables in the theory, more factors might be added if they are
shown to be significant. Accordingly, the independent variables used in this study comprised
the students’ attitude towards STEM, normative social influences, and self-efficacy. In our
study, normative social influences were proxied by parental influence on students’ motivation
to study STEM and their career interests, whereas self-efficacy was proxied by students’
confidence to study STEM and understand the career scope. The three independent
variables were assumed to have influence on the dependent variable, which was the
intention to study STEM. For the purposes of our study, students' STEM career interest was
students’ intention to study STEM proxy. Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework of our
study.

Figure 1: Research Conceptual Framework

Based on the literature reviewed, three hypotheses were developed. The first hypothesis was
that students' attitudes towards STEM have a significant relationship with their intention to
study STEM. The second hypothesis was that parental influence has a significant
relationship with students’ intention to study STEM. Finally, the third hypothesis was that
students’ confidence to study STEM has a significant relationship with their intention to study
STEM. To represent the factors in a more current and precise manner, primary data was
used, as was done by Ito and McPherson (2018) and Malik et al. (2021).

The intended respondents were secondary school students from several secondary schools
in the Tongod District region who took part in the Imbak Canyon Scientific Expedition 2022
organised by the STEM team from the UiTM Sabah Branch. We adapted and modified a
questionnaire from Razali et al. (2017) to study both dependent and independent variables.
Several questionnaires were combined, including the Student Attitudes towards Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) and Interest in STEM Careers
Questionnaire (Tyler-Wood, 2010), the Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ-II) (Glynn
et al., 2011), and the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) (Buri, J.R., 1991).

The STEM Outreach Program held at SMK Tongod was appropriate since SMK Tongod is a
school that is relatively far from the city precinct, and the students there need to be exposed
to science and technology to increase their awareness and encourage them to choose this
field in the future.

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The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Partial Least Square (SmartPLS 4)
were used to perform the data analysis. The data was first recorded into SPSS to obtain
descriptive statistics and check for any missing values. Then, the data were transferred to
SmartPLS 4 for partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis. To
assess construct validity, two model analyses were carried out: a measurement model and a
structural model analysis. In the measurement model analysis, convergent validity analysis
was performed This analysis described the degree of agreement between various items used
to measure the same notion, by using factor loadings, composite reliability (CR), and average
variance extracted (AVE). Factor loadings were used to exclude items with low or no
significance to reduce the number of items requiring further analysis. Hair et al. (2018)
recommended that factor loading values be greater than 0.5 for our study; thus, items with
less than 0.5 values were removed one by one based on their insignificant value. In addition,
the recommendations of Hair et al. (2018), whereby the value of AVE should be more than
0.5 and CR should be more than 0.7 to ensure that the construct has adequate internal
consistency.

In addition, the discriminant validity was evaluated using the Fornell and Larcker (1981)
criterion and cross-loading analysis. For the Fornell and Larcker criterion (1981), it is
suggested that the square root of the AVE should be bigger than the values in the rows and
columns of all associated constructs to ensure that the constructs are unique. For the cross
loadings, the loadings are considered crossed if the values of the matched items and
constructs are greater than 0.50; hence, it is vital to ensure that there is no cross loading
among the variables to achieve satisfactory discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2018). The
second phase of the analysis was the structural model analysis, which is performed to
reduce error variance. The analysis included bootstrapping and hypothesis testing. To
determine the significance levels of loadings, weights, and path coefficients, 5000 resamples
of bootstrapping were used as suggested by Hair et al. (2018). Hypothesis testing was
conducted following the guidelines by Hair et al. (2018) i.e., a t-value above 1.64 is significant
at the five percent level and a t-value above 2.33 is significant at the one percent level.

Results

What variables affect secondary school students' intention to pursue STEM fields of study?

Our findings reinforce prior research that students’ attitude towards STEM and their
confidence to study STEM were among the variables that affect secondary school students’
intention to pursue STEM.

What is the main element influencing secondary students' intention to pursue STEM studies?

We found that students' attitudes towards STEM were the main element influencing their
intention to pursue STEM.

The result indicated that the first hypothesis was supported. The students' attitude towards
STEM has a significant relationship with their intention to study STEM. It was reported that
the T-value of the hypothesis was 2.520, which was above the recommended value of 2.33
(Hair et al., 2018). This shows that there is a significant relationship between students'
attitudes towards STEM and their intention to study STEM at the one percent significance
level. Aligned with the findings obtained by Ismail et al. (2019) and Halim et al. (2018), a
positive attitude towards STEM improves the students' intention to study STEM, whereas a
negative attitude towards STEM decreases the students' intention to study STEM. The
second hypothesis of this study was not supported. It was reported that the T-value of the
hypothesis was 0.970, which was below the minimum recommended value of 1.64 (Hair et

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al., 2018). In contrast to Kurban and Cabrera (2019), this research demonstrated that there is
little correlation between parental influence and the intention of pursuing STEM education.
The students claimed that their parents had no influence on their intention to study STEM.
Although this result may suggest that parents are not always responsible for explicitly
encouraging their children to study STEM, parents can still help shape their children’s
attitudes towards the field. Finally, the third hypothesis was supported. It was reported that
the T-value of the hypothesis was 1.715, which was above the minimum recommended value
of 1.64 (Hair et al., 2018). Aligned with Kuchynka et al. (2021), this study shows that there is
a significant relationship between students' confidence and their intention to study STEM at
the five percent significance level. This indicates that higher confidence in learning STEM
improves the students' intention to study STEM, whereas lower confidence in learning STEM
declines the students' intention to study STEM.
Table 1: Cross measurement of attitude, confidence, and parental influence
towards students’ intention to study STEM.

Original Sample Standard T Statistics P

Sample (O) Mean Deviation (|O/STDEV|) Value
(M) (STDEV) s
Attitude x Intention 0.497 0.479 0.197 2.520 0.012
Confidence x Intention 0.184 0.205 0.190 0.970 0.332
Parental Influence x 0.202 0.217 0.118 1.715 0.086
Intention

Conclusion
As a conclusion, there must be some efforts to instill STEM culture among the younger
generation. Nowadays, the younger generation is good at using social media and technology.
The belief that STEM is difficult must be dispelled to keep the younger generation interested
in the STEM field. Through films and documentaries in Malay, the awareness of the
importance of STEM can be elevated among the young generation in various geographical
positions in Malaysia. Corporate bodies and interested individuals can promote STEM. The
implementation of STEM should be more comprehensive, well-organised, and the results
should be observed so that its effectiveness can be seen. As an example, MOSTI Sabah has
organised various programmes related to STEM during the STEM Carnival, which is held
every year for the community and the younger generation, especially secondary and primary
school students. Lastly, it is very important for educators, parents, and the society to do their
parts so that students have positive attitudes towards STEM education.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to express our special thanks and gratitude to the Ministry
of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Sabah (MOSTI Sabah) for their generosity in funding
the STEM Outreach Program in Tongod District, without the fund, the programme would not
be possible.

Secondly, we also would like to extend our gratitude to PETROSAINS for always supporting
the programme conducted by UiTM Sabah, especially for this STEM program, by providing
us with STEM goodies for the participants and equipment for STEM activities.

Finally, our special thanks go to the management of UiTM Sabah, the management of
Yayasan Sabah Group, and the management of the Imbak Canyon Study Centre for their
cooperation in making this scientific expedition a reality.

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