THE EFFECTS OF GROUP ACTIVITIES ON CAREER MATURITY, INTERESTS, SEX-TYPING OF OCCUPATIONS AND CAREER CHOICE PREFERENCES OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Abstract
This study was designed to investigate the impact of a long term career education intervention implemented within the public school system on the career orientations and interests of girls, the sex-typing of occupations by students, and the career maturity of students. The 24 session treatment lasted for 1 complete school year with follow-up 6 months later. The sample consisted of 189 seventh grade students from 2 separate county school districts: 39 males and 38 females from 1 district comprised the Experimental group; 51 males and 61 females from the other district served as the Control group. Because subjects could not be randomly assigned to groups from the same subject pool, all students were pre-tested with a battery of instruments which assessed various facets of career development. Scores were subsequently analyzed to establish comparability of groups. Following pre-testing, the intervention was carried out in the experimental school; no contact was made with control subjects over the course of the treatment interim. All students were post-tested at the end of the school year and had follow-up tests administered six months later. The treatment was viewed as a proactive, developmental program that included choice awareness and decision making activities, vocational exploration activities, and activities designed to reduce sex-typing of occupations and encourage acceptance of participation in nontraditional occupations. One major goal of this research was to have girls in the Experimental group indicate a willingness to consider nontraditional occupations as an option for themselves. Results showed that girls in the Experimental group were significantly more androgynous in their occupational preferences than girls in the Control group (p > .01) and indicated a significantly greater willingness to consider androgynous occupations (p > .05). The Control group girls had significantly more traditional interest orientations as measured by the Ohio Vocational Interest Survey (1970) than the girls in the Experimental group. Girls in both groups showed significant decrease in sex-typing of occupations over the 15 month time trial (p > .001) as measured by the Occupations Checklist, an instrument developed for this experiment. The boys in both the Experimental and Control groups became more traditional in their occupational preferences over time (p > .05). The boys in the Experimental group scored significantly higher than boys in the Control group on all three scales of the Occupations Checklist (p > .01, p > .001, p > .05), indicating a more rigid dichotomous classification of occupations as appropriate for males or females. Perhaps the most intriguing of all the results obtained in this study are those associated with career maturity. On the three scales of the Career Development Inventory (Super, 1972) the Control group scored significantly higher than the Experimental group (p > .001, p > .001, p > .05). On the CDIA, Planning Orientation, the highest score attained by the Experimental group was the pre-test score. Results from analyses on scales CDIB and CDIC yielded interaction effects that showed significant differences between groups and significant differences within groups over time trials. Results from this study show that a career education intervention can have impact on students' career orientations. Girls seem to have become more liberal in their job choice preferences and in the jobs they would be willing to consider. Boys seem to have become more conservative in their attitudes toward occupational participation. Students of both sexes had career maturity scores that seem to indicate that they were not yet ready to engage in the planning decision making activities measured by the CDI.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Vocational education
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