engleski

Relation between career maturity and differentiation and consistency of vocational interests in primary schools

The goal of this research is to examine the relation between career maturity and some structural characteristics of vocational interests of primary school students. We wanted to retest the Holland’s theoretical assumption that differentiation and consistency of vocational interests could serve as indirect measures of career maturity. The Test of Occupational Knowledge (TOK ; Babarović & Šverko, 2011), which measures cognitive component of career maturity, and Pictorial and Descriptive Interest Inventory (PDII ; Šverko, Babarović & Međugorac, 2014), as a measure of RIASEC interests, were applied on the sample of students of both genders age 11 to 14 (N=823). The TOK showed to be appropriate measure of career maturity, suitable for identifying students at that age that are missing relevant information about world of work and have difficulties in making career choices. The PDII showed high reliability of interest scales and adequate hexagonal structure of ipsatized RIASEC scores. Scores were ipsatized in order to annulate the variance of general factor of interests (Tracey, 2012), highly present in young age samples. The results demonstrate that career maturity was slightly correlated with differentiation of vocational interests, while hypothesis of correlation between career maturity and consistency of vocational interests was not confirmed. We can conclude that the assessment of career maturity should be essential part of career counselling in primary schools and cannot be substituted by indirect measures of RIASEC interest profiles.

Career maturity; Test of Occupational Knowledge (TOK); Pictorial and Descriptive Interest Inventory (PDII); vocational interests; differentiation and consistency of vocational interests

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