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Purpose: To quantify how many of the top 50 under-18 (U18) sprinters in the world managed to become top 50 ranked as adult competitors. The authors also described the career trajectory of athletes ranked in the top 50 during either U18 or senior category. Methods: A total of 4924 male and female athletes competing in sprint races and ranked in the International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics) lists in any of the seasons between the 2000 and 2018 were included in the study. The athletes ranked in the top 50 positions of all-time lists during U18, senior, or both categories were analyzed. Results: Only 17% of the male and 21% of the female top 50 ranked U18 managed to become top 50 ranked senior athletes. The top 50 ranked senior athletes consistently produced yearly larger improvements during late adolescence and early adulthood compared with those who ranked in the top 50 at U18. Furthermore, top 50 ranked senior athletes reached their peak performance later compared with the top 50 ranked only in U18. Conclusions: This study confirms that early success in track and field is not a good predictor of success at senior level in sprinting events. The yearly performance improvements and their tracking provide the most suitable approach to identify athletes more likely to succeed as elite performers in adulthood. The authors hope that the results of this study can provide useful comparative data and reference criteria for talent-identification and -development programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying in Hungary has become a new trend among Chinese students under the Belt and Road Initiative. The spectacular tripling of the growth of incoming Chinese students has influenced the number of international students in Hungary. In this paper, 26 in-depth narrative interviews with Chinese students in Hungary were conducted and analysed, employing the grounded theory method. This research reveals that beyond considerable uncertainty regarding future plans and career trajectories, three paths are open for Chinese students in Hungary. The largest group intends to return to China after graduation, although they have doubts concerning whether their acquired skills and knowledge can be utilised. The second group aims to find niche jobs, in which they can utilise their in-betweenness. Finally, a small proportion consciously builds their network and aims to remain in Hungary or Europe, engage in further studies or seek employment. The findings contribute to policymakers who support Chinese international educational mobility and to individual Chinese students that wish to widen their horizons and find alternative career paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. This study explores the ways in which racism-related stress affects the well-being and career trajectories of Black nursing professionals and certified nursing assistants and their strategies for coping with such stress. Method. Semistructured interviews were conducted to explore racism-related stress and coping strategies. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Results. Findings illuminate how Black nursing professionals and certified nursing assistants experience both subtle and explicit racism in the workplace from a variety of actors, including patients, peers, and supervisors. Coping strategies included consultation with personal support systems, such as friends outside of work or family members. Participants described barriers to advancement, including disparate educational and mentoring experiences, and a lack of policies or standards to address racial bias and discrimination in their work settings. Discussion. Facilitating diversity in nursing and supporting nursing professionals of color requires multipronged approaches that include collaborations between education systems and employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role and number of Associate Dean posts in UK universities has grown considerably in recent years. Despite this, relatively little is known about the reasons why individuals take on such roles and how it fits into their career trajectories. The purpose of this article is to explore these issues by drawing on data from the first national study of Associate Deans in the UK. Adopting a two-staged mixed methods approach, data were collected from semi-structured interviews (n = 15) and an online survey (n = 172). The findings suggest that academics take on the role for a number of reasons such as the challenge of working across the University, making a difference to staff and students, or being asked to take it on by a senior member of staff. It is argued that these Associate Dean roles are part of new and emerging academic career pathways within the higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN 1988–2013 to showcase methodological issues of converting panel data into career trajectories. Three metrics are proposed to describe career trajectories: calendar year, age of respondent, and subsequent career year starting from the first job. I present the POLPAN data in each of these metrics and discuss their benefits and limitations. The article then deals with the issue of selecting a single job that best describes the respondent’s occupational position when the respondent holds two or more different jobs. One possible solution is to select a single job using an original five-step algorithm. The problem of multiple jobs can also be solved by defining the career trajectory through occupational scales. A total of six such scales are available in POLPAN. The study further shows how data on career trajectories can be supplemented with data about job interruptions caused by unemployment, birth of a child, military service, or other reasons. A separate section is devoted to Converter-2015, a computer application that converts the original wide-format POLPAN data to the long format required in longitudinal analyses. I also propose an additional new “presentation” format, which helps identify job career patterns. The paper ends with a discussion of data quality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As work and employment transitions become more frequent and difficult, the demand for formal career guidance increases. Women are likely to experience structural labour market disadvantage and may benefit from formal support that is sympathetic to their particular needs. Yet the traditional psychological paradigms that dominate career guidance practice have assumed homogeneity. To contribute both to broader debates about careers services for adults and the development of more relevant theoretical frameworks for career practice for women, results are presented from an international, comparative qualitative investigation of the career trajectories of older women (aged 45 to 65) in Australia, England and South Africa. These results confirm a need for career guidance that is nuanced and differentiated for women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Psychology is a very popular undergraduate major. Examining wage data from a range of degree holders reveals much about the expected career trajectories of those with psychology degrees. First, regarding baccalaureates, psychology and other liberal arts graduates—compared with those from certain preprofessional and technical undergraduate programs—generally fall in relatively low tiers of salary levels at both starting and later career points. Salary levels among baccalaureate alumni groups correlate with averaged measures of salary satisfaction, repeated job seeking, and perceptions of underemployment. These patterns seem to stem from the specific occupational categories (job titles) entered by graduates in psychology compared with other graduates, calling into question the employability advantage of so-called generic liberal arts skills. Second, psychology master’s degree holders also generally fall in a low tier of salary among their science, engineering, and health counterparts. Third, psychology college faculty (including instructors) fall in low tiers of salary compared with their colleagues from other academic fields. Such broadly based indications of the relative economic disadvantages of psychology degrees have implications for career counseling in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper describes the origins and discusses the results of a study of youth transitions to work in England and Germany in the late 1980s, at a time of dramatic social, economic and political change. The novel design involving quantitative and qualitative data collection from young men and young women on the same 'career trajectories' in two comparable labour markets in England and two in Germany, generated insights into the way vocational training systems in the two countries were being experienced by young people and how the vocational training systems were adapting to change. The German system for managing the transition through apprenticeship with cultural roots going back the Middle Ages was directed at instilling a broad range of civic attributes of which occupational identity was the central part. In contrast the English system was focused exclusively on equipping young people with the skills that would enable them to gain and retain employment. During the transition process itself the identity of German trainees was closer to that of student compared with trainees in England where that of worker was dominant. At times of massive economic (and in Germany, political) upheaval, both countries learned from each other in attempting to adapt their systems to meet young people's needs with mixed results. The policy challenges raised by the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]