The lack of students interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related careers calls for studies that identify variables affecting their career decisions. By drawing on recent conceptualizations of the cost domain first introduced in the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivations, this study investigated whether the perceived difficulty of school science predicted and affected elementary school students (N = 245) task effort and loss of valued alternatives experienced while engaging in a science-related course. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that students’ perceived difficulty significantly predicted levels of cost experienced when studying science. Likewise, multi-factor ANOVAs revealed that students perceiving school science as a difficult subject reported significantly higher levels of task effort and loss of valued alternatives related to studying science. These findings suggest that the attitudinal dimensions of perceived difficulty play a promising role in the development of cost in science, which has valuable implications for repairing the leaky STEM pipeline.

由于缺乏对从事科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 相关职业感兴趣的学生，因此需要研究确定影响其职业决策的变量。通过借鉴最近在成就动机的期望值理论中引入的成本域概念，本研究调查了学校科学的感知难度是否预测和影响小学生（N = 245) 参与科学相关课程时所经历的任务努力和有价值替代品的损失。分层多元回归分析表明，学生的感知难度显着预测了学习科学时所经历的成本水平。同样，多因素方差分析表明，将学校科学视为一门困难学科的学生报告的任务努力水平显着提高，并且失去了与学习科学相关的有价值的替代方案。这些发现表明，感知困难的态度维度在科学成本的发展中发挥着有希望的作用，这对于修复泄漏的 STEM 管道具有重要意义。