Table 3.

Educational ambitions among adolescents who experienced parental divorce during childhood or adolescence (n = 639) compared to ambitions among those whose parents were continuously married (n = 1,752) in a cross-sectional study of 18/19 year-old adolescents in Oslo (N = 2,391) after adjustment in multinomial logistic regressions for potential confounders measured at age 15/16

Independent variables	Ambition for secondary education	Undecided educational ambition
Crude results
Parental divorce (ref = continuously married)	1.9 (1.3–2.7)**	1.6 (1.2–1.9)**
Adjusted results
Parental divorce (ref = continuously married)	1.5 (0.9–2.3)	1.3 (1.1–1.8)
Gender (ref = boys)	0.5 (0.3–0.8)*	1.1 (0.8–1.3)
Ethnicity (ref = western)	0.7 (0.4–1.4)	0.4 (0.3–0.7)**
Family economy (ref = average and below)	0.6 (0.4–0.9)	0.8 (0.6–1.0)
Social support (ref = low)	1.3 (0.6–2.8)*	0.7 (0.5–1.1)
Mother’s education (ref = higher sec. sch. or above)	1.6 (1.0–2.5)*	1.0 (0.7–1.3)
Father education (ref = higher sec. sch. or above)	1.6 (1.0–2.5)	1.1 (0.9–1.5)
Internalized problems (ref = no)	1.4 (0.8–2.5)	1.0 (0.7–1.4)
Educ. performance at primary sch. (ref = outstanding)
Poor educ. performance	14.6 (7.5–28.3)**	3.3 (2.2–4.9)**
Average educ. performance	3.8 (2.1–6.8)*	2.0 (1.5–2.6)*

Ambition for university/college education was the reference category. Odds ratios (95 % confidence interval)

Significant association ** p < 0.01 or * p < 0.05