In the past, students' participation in science competitions has been positively associated with their aspirations to pursue a career in science. Previous studies, however, were predominantly focused around successful competitors, overlooking the largest group of participants: those who are faced with early elimination. We therefore aimed to investigate the effects of elimination on the development of biology-related study and career task values and expectancy of success in first-round participants of the German Biology Olympiad (N = 381, mean age 16.5 years, 72% female). This study was the first of its kind to use a latent change score model approach to examine the effects of early elimination, with a particular focus on participants who placed great emphasis on succeeding in the competition. We found that, regardless of success or failure, participants' biology-related study and career task value remained stable from the first to the second round of the competition, while their expectancy of success in biology-related studies and career developed positively. Yet, for those participants who placed great importance on advancing in the competition, early elimination interfered with the development of study and career expectations, resulting in a weaker development. The outcomes of this study suggest that (1) science competitions should re-envision themselves to more directly address participants' values about studies and careers, especially in earlier competition rounds, and (2) science competitions should find innovative ways to provide detailed feedback to students and teachers to improve post-elimination performance. Our findings complement existing expectancy-value research and can serve as a starting point for future studies exploring mechanisms behind early elimination in different science domains and cultural contexts, providing empirical insight into creating an inclusive and supportive environment for all science competition competitors.

中文翻译：

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“我们很遗憾地通知您……”——提前淘汰对科学竞赛参与者职业抱负的影响

过去，学生参加科学竞赛与他们追求科学事业的愿望呈正相关。然而，之前的研究主要集中在成功的竞争对手身上，忽视了最大的参与者群体：那些面临早期淘汰的人。因此，我们的目的是调查淘汰对德国生物奥林匹克第一轮参赛者（N  = 381，平均年龄 16.5 岁，72% 女性）生物学相关学习和职业任务价值观的发展以及成功预期的影响。这项研究是同类研究中第一个使用潜在变化评分模型方法来检验早期淘汰的影响的研究，特别关注那些非常重视在比赛中取得成功的参与者。我们发现，无论成功还是失败，从第一轮比赛到第二轮，参与者的生物学相关学习和职业任务价值保持稳定，而他们对生物学相关学习和职业成功的预期呈积极发展。然而，对于那些非常重视竞争晋级的参与者来说，过早的淘汰会干扰学习和职业期望的发展，导致发展较弱。这项研究的结果表明，（1）科学竞赛应该重新设想自己，以更直接地表达参与者对学习和职业的价值观，特别是在早期的竞赛中，（2）科学竞赛应该找到创新的方式来为参与者提供详细的反馈学生和教师提高淘汰后的表现。我们的研究结果补充了现有的期望值研究，并可以作为未来研究的起点，探索不同科学领域和文化背景下早期淘汰背后的机制，为为所有科学竞赛参赛者创造一个包容和支持性的环境提供经验见解。