The role of parents’ educational background in upper secondary students’ utilization of career guidance resources

Studies have drawn contrasting conclusions as to whether guidance reproduces existing inequalities or has a compensatory role for those with low educational parental background. The study presented here is based on large-scale survey data on 8,982 upper secondary students’ utilization of different types of information and guidance resources in Denmark. The findings show that students without university-educated parents utilized all of the main guidance resources available to them to an equal or greater degree when compared to students with university-educated parents, net of GPA, origin and gender. However, further analyses suggest that the moderating effect of guidance resources on the relationship between family background and students’ expectations for higher education is limited.