Abstract
This paper presents the results of one research about adolescent’s decision/ indecision regarding career choice. Teenagers indecision regarding career choice is influenced by some variables such as:self-efficacy, parental involvement, locus of control, and also by personality factors such as: extraversion and neuroticism/ emotional instability. When pupils with external locus of control have to take a decision, they show a high level of confusion and become undecided in choosing a vocational path. Externalist people have the tendency to see life as being determinate by chance and often they do not find a reason to get involved in taking the decision. On the other way, teenagers with a high level of internal locus of control are spending more time to analyze the situation and this is why they are more decided in future decisions. This research show that not so enthusiastic adolescent’s that face difficulties in communicating with other people and have problems in imposing their point of view or options in front of others (parents and teachers, for example) have the tendency to face higher difficulties in adequate career choice to follow in the future.
Keywords: Indecisioncareerlocus of controlextraversionneuroticism/ emotional instability
Introduction
This paper has the main objective of investigating some aspects regarding adolescent’s indecision in career choice at the end of high school. Indecision in career choice is a variable which influences the process of opportunities identification in finding and developing a personal career that can confer to a teenager (future-to-be adult) the desired personal, professional and social status.
Specialized studies from scientifically field about decision/ indecision level in choosing the desired career associate it with individual features (recognized and rated skills level of the person in question; personality characteristics; aspirations and expectations; interests for certain professional fields; self-esteem and confidence in its own forces; thinking style etc).
The authors whom studied indecision in career choice (the variables which can explain or support it) and the consequences of indecision chronicity regarding career, used as methodological approaches multivariate studies based on regression analysis or, not so often, on testing certain hypotheses about causal models, with the help of different strategies. Explanatory models were either partially tested (for example the socio-cognitive model of career developing, proposed by R. W. Lent and his contributors), or proved to be very difficult to operationalize and test in scientific terms.
One of the most consisting models of career developing was proposed by the American psychologist J. L. Holland. Together with this model we have some classical models which were the foundation for developing and revising new approaches (for example, the model of professional interests proposed by D. E. Super, or the one generated by E. K. Strong). There were some approaches that had a short time influence on research and practice for career development field (for example, the model proposed by E. Ginzberg and his contributors, or the one theorized by A. Roe). None of these models focused on career indecision issue. Without a specific remark to “career decision/ indecision” expression, Lent, Brown and Hackett (1995) offered an understandable and comprehensive approach for personal (individual), contextual and particular factors that influence someone’s career choice behaviour.
Working Hypotheses
Taking into consideration factors that influence indecision in career choice, we formulated the following working hypotheses:
For adolescents, indecision in career choice negatively correlate with perceived self-efficacy.
For adolescents, indecision level in career choice negatively correlate with the degree of parental involvement in career decision process.
Externalism (as polar facet of locus of control) positively correlates with adolescent’s indecision in their decision regarding career choice.
For adolescents, indecision in career choice positively correlate with emotional instability level (neuroticism).
Adolescent’s indecision regarding career choice negatively correlate with extraversion, agreeableness, intellectual openness and conscientiousness level.
Methodology
Study participants. Socio-demographic and educational features
At our study participated 198 adolescents, all of them pupils in the 12th grade of high-schools from Timisoara.
The distribution of pupils according to
The participants were from the following profiles:
The participants were asked to indicate the persons with whom they were living at home (either parents, or other legal supporter). From the study participants 134 (67,68%) were living with both their parents, 36 (18,18%) only with one of the parents (the other one was either deceased, or divorced), 22 pupils (11,11%) were living with one of the parents (the other one was living abroad) and 6 pupils (3,03%) had other situations (they were living with their grandparents, relatives etc.).
Instruments and research evidences
Our study used the following instruments and research evidences:
The Career Decision Scale – CDS (Osipow, 1983) which has 19 items and it is used to measure indecision level in career;
Career Decision Self-Efficacy – Short Form. CDSE-SF (Taylor and Betz, 1983) which has 25 items and it is used to evaluate the level of confidence in personal competences regarding identification and development of relevant information in taking one decision for personal career;
Parent Career Behaviour Checklist – PCBC (Keller and Whiston, 2008) which has 24 items grouped in two scales;
Career Locus of Control Scale – CLCS (Millar and Shevlin, 2007);
Big Five Inventory – BFI (O. P. John, E. M. Donahue and R. L. Kentle) which has 44 items assigned to five major personality factors:
a).
b).
c).
d).
e).
Table
From the
Cronbach coefficient values listed in the table it can be seen a very good level of internal consistency for the scale we used to evaluate the
On the other way, for the scales through which we evaluated the big five personality factors, internal consistency values were a little big lower, especially for
3.3 Procedure
The sets formed from five questionnaires (the instruments we presented in previous paragraphs) were completed by children during some meetings. The questionnaires administration was conducted collectively.
Results and discussions
Table
The first observation is that the distribution of all variables has not deviated significantly from normality (as indicated by K-S Test values). Although,
On the other way, the scores adolescent’s obtained for
Table
1 d-Cohen coefficient shows the effect size indicator for averages comparison between two independent groups, lots or samples, averages scored for the same characteristic, evaluated through the same method. J. Cohen, the author who proposed this indicator and theorized about the effect size, suggested the following guidelines for interpreting the significance of d-coefficient value (Cohen, 1992): 0,20 – low level; 0,50 – medium level; 0,80 – high level.
The average comparison of the variables we measured in our study taking into consideration
Table
1 Significantly higher than adolescent’s average from Biology-Chemistry high-school profile
2 Significantly lower than adolescent’s average at Social Science high-school profile
High-school profile variable had a significant effect only on intellectual openness among teenagers.
High-school profile had a statistically non-significant effect on teenagers scores they obtained at indecision in career choice, although adolescent’s who were studying at Social Sciences had the tendency to show the lowest level of indecision (in comparison of all the four high-school profiles mentioned), and the ones from Mathematics-Informatics showed the highest level.
Correlations between measured variables
Association relationships between variables taken into consideration were highlighted through Bravais-Pearson linear bivariate correlations (table
Conclusions
Scores from
Scores from
On the other way,
From table
Even though scores from
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Publication Date
22 December 2016
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978-1-80296-017-4
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Future Academy
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18
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1st Edition
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Subjects
Teacher, teacher training, teaching skills, teaching techniques, special education, children with special needs
Cite this article as:
Dumitru, I., & Bersan, O. S. (2016). Aspects Regarding Adolescent’s Indecision On Career Choice. In V. Chis, & I. Albulescu (Eds.), Education, Reflection, Development - ERD 2016, vol 18. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 131-139). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2016.12.17