Testing a longitudinal social cognitive model of intended persistence with engineering students across gender and race/ethnicity

•Tested temporal relations in an integrative social cognitive model with engineering students.•A bidirectional model fit the data well in a longitudinal study.•Findings suggested gender and racial–ethnic model invariance.•A reciprocal relation among academic satisfaction and intended persistence emerged.

We examined the temporal relations within Lent et al.'s (2013) integrative SCCT model of academic satisfaction and intended persistence in a sample of 551 engineering undergraduates from a Hispanic serving institution. They completed measures of instrumentality, support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, academic satisfaction, and intended persistence at two time points approximately 12 months apart. Using longitudinal cross-panel design, the findings supported a model where: (a) instrumentality predicted self-efficacy, (b) self-efficacy was a temporal precursor for both interests and academic satisfaction, (c) support was a temporal precursor for outcome expectations, while also predicting academic satisfaction, (d) academic satisfaction and intended persistence had a reciprocal relation with one another, and (e) relations in the model did not differ by gender or race/ethnicity. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.