The Development of the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) Meredith W. Kier & Margaret R. Blanchard & Jason W. Osborne & Jennifer L. Albert Published online: 20 November 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Internationally, efforts to increase student interest in science, technology, engi- neering, and mathematics (STEM) careers have been on the rise. It is often the goal of such efforts that increased interest in STEM careers should stimulate economic growth and enhance innovation. Scientific and educational organizations recommend that efforts to interest students in STEM majors and careers begin at the middle school level, a time when students are developing their own interests and recognizing their academic strengths. These factors have led scholars to call for instruments that effectively measure interest in STEM classes and careers, particularly for middle school students. In response, we leveraged the social cognitive career theory to develop a survey with subscales in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this manuscript, we detail the six stages of development of the STEM Career Interest Survey. To investigate the instrument's reliability and psychomet- ric properties, we administered this 44-item survey to over 1,000 middle school students (grades 6–8) who primarily were in rural, high-poverty districts in the southeastern USA. Confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the STEM-CIS is a strong, single factor instru- ment and also has four strong, discipline-specific subscales, which allow for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subscales to be administered separately or in Res Sci Educ (2014) 44:461–481 DOI 10.1007/s11165-013-9389-3 M. W. Kier (*) Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Howard University, 2441 4th St. NW, Washington, DC 20059, USA e-mail: meredith.kier@howard.edu M. R. Blanchard Department of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7801, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801, USA e-mail: Meg_Blanchard@ncsu.edu J. W. Osborne College of Education & Human Development, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA e-mail: jwosbo04@louisville.edu J. L. Albert Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 8206, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801, USA e-mail: Jennifer_Albert@ncsu.edu