A STUDY 0F THE RELATIONS BETWEEN TENTATEVE
OCCUPA‘FIONAL CHOKE-VOCATIONAL INTERESTS
COHGRUEENQCY AND. SELECTED VARiABLES

Thesis for {the Beam cf Ed. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNWERSIW
Leonard W. Phiéiips
1965

i. ‘ mild" 4"};‘a-umdo-o'18w1'

. I ,3 ‘5'
THE; S n , 1

t"~"' ¥
3 LIN? ’RY g
MlClllgu- State
Univm ity

 

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

A STUDY OF SELECTED PREDICTOR VARIABLES FOR
SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE-VOCATIONAL INTERESTS
CONGRUENCY WITH VOCATIONAL EXPECTATIONS

presented by
Leonard W. Phillips

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

_.P_hD_ degree in _E_ ducation i

72% M

Major professor

 

 

Date/QM /f /f(5 /

'-

PI

ABSTRACT
A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN

TENTATIVE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE-VOCATIONAL
INTERESTS CONGRUENCY AND SELECTED VARIABLES

a \
G.
i

by Leonard w: Phillips

This was an investigation of one dimension of real-
ism of older boys' tentative occupational choice: congru-
ency of vocational interests and tentative occupational
choice. The study's main purpose was to test the hypothesis
that there are positive relations between tentative occupa-
tional choice-vocational interests congruency and each of
the following variables: (1) knowledge of one's scholastic
ability, (2) knowledge of one's vocational interests, (3)
use of friends, teachers, school, books and magazines, and
work experience as sources of information when making an oc-
cupational choice, (A) number of sources of occupational in-
formation used, (5) number of visits to counselor, (6) so-
cial class, and (7) prudentness.

This hypothesis was based upon research and theory
concerning occupational choice and vocational interests,
particularly that of E. Ginzberg and his associates.

The sample consisted of 22h male eleventh graders
enrolled in the Berkeley High School. The school is located
in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. Respondents with a
Differential Ratio of 4-2 or higher for the Kuder Preference

Record-Occupational Form D key matching their tentative

32:!
mi"
‘6‘.¢
3.:1
“o
(23L

‘- .
i

360

-w. is
. a a. a
1, up.
D‘ \
u... .. ...

Leonard W. Phillips

occupational choice were assigned to a "congruent" sub-
sample (Neshé). Respondents with a DB of -2 or lower com-
prised an "incongruent" sub-sample (N==hl). Comparison of
the sub-samples with the rest of the sample of 22h boys
showed that most of the latter were students who chose low-
status vocations for which no KPH-O keys were available.

The constructs in the hypothesis were operation-
alized as follows: (1) occupational-choice interests con-
gruency: DR from the KPH-O keys matching each tentative oc-
cupational choice; (2) scholastic ability: School and Col-
1ege Ability Test, Level 2; (3) knowledge of scholastic
ability: ratings of how well respondents' self-rating of
their scholastic ability matched their SCAT scores; (h)
knowledge of vocational interests: rating of how well each-
respondent's self-rating of interests matched his KPR-O
score; (5) social class: Edwards' and Wilson's system of
occupational categories; (6) prudentness: modification of
Edwards' and Wilson's prudent-immediate scale; and (7) types
of information sources and number of counselor visits and
information sources: questionnaire.

The existence of certain hypothesized relations were
tested by analyzing the data to determine if congruency of
occupational choice and interests varies directly with the ‘
other variables being studied. For instance, if boys who
are high on congruency are also high.with regard to fre-
quency of visits to their counselor, it was concluded that a

relation exists between the two variables, providing the

 

‘Ji-

mu.

I
he “

Val.

.-

o" .l

u
t"

i‘.‘

5“
‘ e

Leonard W. Phillips

boys in the two sub-samples were found to differ with regard
to the number of such visits.

The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was employed to deter-
mine if the congruent group were stochastically higher than
the incongruent group in terms of the following five vari-
ables (alpha = .05): (1) Estimation of vocational inter-
ests: D = .h03 is in predicted direction and statistically
significant. (2) Estimation of scholastic ability: D:=.085
is in predicted direction and not significant. (3) Number
of information sources: D = .301 is in the predicted direc-
tion and significant. (h) Frequency of counselor visits:

D 8 .125 is in the expected direction and not significant.
(5) Social class: D ==.hh6 is in the direction predicted
and significant.

A £_test was used to test the reliability of the
difference between mean prudentness scores for congruent
and incongruent groups (alpha = .01). The difference of
h.219 is statistically significant.

The difference-between-proportions test was used to
determine the reliability of the difference between the pro-
portion of the congruent group and the incongruent group
which reported "school" as their most important source of
information (alpha 8 .05). The obtained 5 for the differ-
ence is 1.735 and is significant.

The findings supported the hypothesis for variables
2, h, 6, and 7 only. The results only supported the hypoth-

esis for variable 3 as it pertains to "school".

A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN
TENTATIVE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE-VOCATIONAL
INTERESTS CONGRUENCY AND SELECTED VARIABLES

By

Leonard W. Phillips

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

College of Education

1965

I I
’1
(I)
(I)

V
“Aw.

.'"~

'

r
a!)

l 5
l I,
I—'

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are a number of persons to whom I wish to ex-
press my deep appreciation for their role in the production
of this dissertation. I am particularly indebted to Dr.
Wilbur B. Brookover, who supervised its development and
acted as Chairman of my Guidance Committee during a crucial
period. The other regular members of the Committee, Dr.
David Gottlieb, Dr. David R. Krathwohl and Dr. Stanley P.
Wronski, also deserve my heartfelt thanks for their service
in this capacity. I would also like to thank Dr. George
Barnett and Dr. William Faunce, the latter of the Sociology
Department, for serving on the Committee during my Final
Oral Examination.

I wish to acknowledge the great amount of time and
advice which Dr. T. Bentley Edwards afforded me in the col-
lection of the data. Dr. Alan B. Wilson was very kind in
also lending assistance in this task. Mr. William D'Aoust,
Head Counselor of the Berkeley High School, not only helped
to obtain permission from the Berkeley Unified School Dis-
trict to collect the data but also helped me with the innu-
merable details involved in such a task. His assistance was
of inestimable value as was that of members of the counsel-

ing staff and the classroom teachers who were involved in

ii

the study.

Dr. Esther E. Diamond and Mr. F. Murphy, both of
Science Research Associates, were very helpful in providing
valuable data concerning the Kuder Preference Record-
Occupational as well as providing inventory materials at
minimum cost.

Mr. Collins Haan, Principal of the Fremont High
School, and his Head Counselor, Mr. Yaeger, should be
thanked for their cooperation in helping to pre-test the
questionnaire used in the study.

I would also like to convey my appreciation to Mr.
William Darnell for his excellent advice concerning the
data's quantitative analysis; to my colleague, Dr. John
McTernan, who was kind enough to read the second draft; and
to my wife, Anne Phillips, who did most of the typing and
tallying required. She also provided me with needed encour-
agement and made many sacrifices during the production of

this dissertation.

iii

n.-

fl.~_

o .3.

a...

‘ .Ru

\
4.4.

“I
5".

Y~.

‘Q

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
LIST OF APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O 0 O 1

Statement of the Problem
Definition of Terms
References

II. BACKGROUND RESEARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The Extent of Realism of Vocational
Choice Among Adolescents

Research on the Correlates of Realism
of Vocational Choice

References

III. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES, QUESTIONS AND GENERAL
PROCEDURES 0 O O O O O O C O O I O O C O O 25

Hypotheses and a Question About Knowledge
of Self and of Occupations

Hypotheses Concerning Attitudinal Traits

Question About Apparent Crystallization
of Occupational Choice

General Procedures

References

Iv. CONGRUENCY 0F TENTATIVE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE
AND INVENTORIED VOCATIONAL INTERESTS . . . hS

Tentative Occupational Choice

Inventoried Vocational Interests

Non-scorability of Tentative Vocational
Choices

Tentative Occupational Choice-Vocational
Choice Congruency

iv

Chapter Page
References

V. KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND OF OCCUPATIONS . . . . 7O

Self-estimations of Scholastic Ability
and of Vocational Interests

Scholastic Ability

Importance of Various Sources of Infor-
mation

Number of Information Sources and of
Counselor Visits

References

VI. VOCATIONAL CHOICE-INTERESTS CONGRUENCY AND
PRWEMNESS‘IWEDIATEIESS o o o o o o o o 89

References

VII. VOCATIONAL CHOICE-INTERESTS CONGRUENCY AND
SOCIAL CLASS 0 O O O O O O O O O O 0 O I O 95

References

VIII. APPARENT CRYSTALLIZATION 0F TENTATIVE
OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Measurement, Analysis, Results, and
Conclusion ‘
References

IX. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTI‘IER RESEARCH o o o o o o o o o o o o o 107

Summary of Conclusions
Suggestions for Further Research

APPENDICES 116

Table

2.

lCL

ILL.

LIST OF TABLES

Percentage of the respondents who were sixth
graders in 1959 classified according to
their enrollment status in 196h and race .

Types of occupations chosen, number of times
each type was chosen, and percentage of
choices which were scorable . . . . . . .

Percentage of chosen occupations classified
by scorability and socio-economic status .

Percentage of boys in the combined sub-
samples and in the group of other partici-
pants classified by the socio-economic
status of chosen occupation . . . . . . .

Percentage of boys in the combined sub-
samples and in the group of other partici-
pants classified by race . . . . . . . . .

Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
knowledge of their vocational interests .

Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
knowledge of their scholastic ability . .

Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
most important source of information . . .

Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
number of information sources . . . . . .

Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
number of counselor visits . . . . . . . .

Percentage of reapondents classified by
social class and occupational choice-

vi

Page

39

in

51+

61+

65

73

7h

79

85

86

Table Page
interests congruency . . . . . . . . . . . 98

12. Percentage of respondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
number of reservations concerning their
chosen vocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10h

13. Percentage of reapondents classified by oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and
ratings on three aspects of occupational
choice crystallization . . . . . . . . . . 105

vii

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix Page
A Questionnaire on Vocational Interests . . . 116
B Letter Distributed to All Boys in the

Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Prudent-mediate scale 0 o o o o o o o o o 123

D Occupational Categories . . . . . . . . . . 12S

viii

\IV

N n. .12.. iv New. .I .1 New. MU. Mn... w. 4 bid. FM CPL! Ahw 3., .x K e .
and . VIII“ Fr k wort bu.- Pu s. “(0‘ his. be, aka . ‘we 2 u I. \ P- \ ru.\ I»
I. I e Alb A I C O Q h a... \fiic-
i
I
O I
o o .
c O
r C
a .
v r
n n e
o p n a
a a L o
o .
a n o
a I e
o o s u
C I h . e
9 I O
o

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Statement of the Problem

For a long time educators, social scientists and
guidance workers have given serious attention to realism or
appropriateness of older boys' occupational choice. Al-
though they have succeeded in increasing our knowledge about
the matter, the literature concerning it indicates that
there are many important things we still do not know about
realism of occupational chOice.

This is an investigation of one dimension of the
phenomenon: congruency of vocational interests and tenta-
tive occupational choice. The study's purpose is to test
certain hypotheses and to answer selected questions concern-
ing the relations between occupational choice-interests con-
gruency and each of the following variables: (1) estimation
of one's scholastic ability and interests, (2) selected at-
titudinal traits, (3) knowledge of one's self and of occupa-
tions, and (h) apparent crystallization of occupational
choice.

The study is an analysis of data collected from a
sampfle of eleventh-grade boys. The analysis is designed to

test certain hypotheses and to answer selected questions

1

2
concerning the population from which the sample was drawn.

The problem with which this investigation deals is
both real and educationally significant. It stems from the
vocational preparation role of education in American so-
ciety. Brookover and Gottlieb (196k) cite public opinion
surveys showing the public believes vocational preparation
to be one of the primary functions of schools. Educational
institutions have other roles which are ancillary to this
general function.

Warner, Havighurst, and Loeb (lth) and Gross,
Wronski, and Hansen (1962) have described how the schools
act as a sorting and selecting agency. Schools, according
to these authors, assign students to various curricular pro-
grams thus greatly influencing the students' subsequent sta-
tion in life. Brookover and Gottlieb (196h) have pointed
out how education serves to mitigate social inequities by
providing compensatory education. Our schools actually per-
form both of these functions simultaneously, and this ex-
plains, in part at least, the vocational guidance service
which all school systems provide in one form or another.

The service has been conceptualized by Warner, Havighurst,
and Loeb (l9hh, p. 163) as follows:
The best solution of this problem,[i.e., guiding
adolescents into appropriate courses of study]
seems to lie in establishing a scientific and
honest guidance program. The student's aptitudes,
abilities, and expectations in life should be
u’assessed and considered by wise and well trained

counselors who should then give the student and
his parents their honest and frank advice.

3

Most studies of vocational preferences (e.g., Ryan,
1953; Mehenti, l95h; Reisner, 1956) show that a high propor-
tion of students have preferences which are unrealistic.
However, the researchers cited are by no means in agreement
as to what this proportion is, and it is possible to find
evidence (Lockwood, 1958) indicating that high school stu-
dents have remarkably realistic occupational preferences.

Few people would not agree that vocational guidance
is more scientific and objective than it was when Who Shall
Be Educated? was written. New measuring instruments to help
the guidance worker are continually being developed and imp
proved. The Occupational Form D of the Kuder Preference
Record is an example of one of these instruments. Although
the KPR-O has been on the market for a number of years,
nothing appears to have been published regarding its use
with high school youngsters.

In focusing upon congruency between the vocational
interests and plans of high school boys, it was necessary to
ignore certain dimensions of realism of vocational choice.
Girls were omitted from the sample because their inclusion
would have precluded use of the Kuder Preference Record in
the study. This inventory can be used only with.ma1e re-
spondents. The matter of vocational preferences, i.e., what
occupation the students would like to enter, is also not
part of the study. Considerable evidence (Trow, 19hl;
Gilger, l9h2; Porter, l95h; Stephenson, 1957a. 1957b) indi-

cates that vocational choices and preferences are not the

h

same thing. Like Holloway and Berreman (1959), this inves-
tigator feels that choices are more significant than pref-
erences.

A molar analysis of realism of tentative vocational
choice would necessarily include such variables as mental
ability, existing opportunities in the occupational struc-
ture, and general aptitudes. At the present time, there are
no tests with up-to-date occupational norms available for
measuring vocational aptitudes or mental abilities. It is
very difficult to make objective and reliable assessments of

vocational choices in terms of the current labor market.

Definition of Terms

 

Tentative occupational choice.--This term denotes
the vocational plans or expectations youth have at the end
of the "tentative period of occupational choice". This
period has been described by Ginzberg g§_gl. (1951, p. 186)
as follows:

The tentative period is characterized by the
individual's recognition of the problem of de-
ciding on a future occupation. The solution
must be sought in terms of future probable sat-
isfactions. During this period, however, the
translation is almost exclusively in terms of
subjective factors: interests, capacities, and
values. In fact, as most individuals reach the
end of this period, they recognize that their
approach has been too subjective. They, there-
fore, consider their choices tentative, for
they realize that an effective resolution re-
quires the incorporation of reality consider-
ations and this will be possible only on the
basis of additional experience.

Inventoried vocational interests.--The phrase refers

5

to the interests which are measured by such standardized
instruments as the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, the
Kuder Preference Record-Vocational, and the Allport,
Vernon, Lindzey Study of Values. This usage is from Super
(19h7. p. 376).

Tentative occupational choice-vocational interests
congruency.--This is the agreement between a reapondent's
inventoried vocational interests and his tentative occupa-
tional choice.

Attitudinal traits.--These are personality traits
which approach being attitudes. According to Allport
(1937, p. #19), they are,". . . modes of adjustment through
which the person orients himself to some specifiable aspect
of his situation."

Prudentness.--This attitudinal trait is a consist-
ent tendency to approach decisions or actions regarding
social objects in one's environment analytically and delib-
erately. Edwards and Wilson (1958, p. 281), in describing
the trait's cognitive dimension, have written, "deliber-
ation involves the consideration of alternate forms of
action, the evaluation of the possible consequences, and
the subordination of immediate ends to long run values."
{The affective dimension of prudency denotes an intrinsic
.1nterest in the humanities and social sciences.

Immediateness.--According to Edwards and Wilson
(21958, p. 280), it is the disposition to make social deci-

sions and take social action on the basis of, "the most

6
proximate clues or associations." Immediateness denotes an
impulsion toward action, an intolerance for ambiguity and a
propensity for extrinsic rewards.
Work and pleasure attitudinal traits.--These two
contrasting traits have been defined by Ginzberg g§_gl.
(1951, pp. 208-209) as follows:

Such a sharp dichotomy does not imply that the
work-oriented person has little interest in
attaining current sensual satisfaction. . . .
The difference lies in what the individual
considers the center of his life, the force
which gives him direction, in other words, his
dominant values.

The most reliable criterion to distinguish
between the work- and pleasure-oriented indi-
vidual is the ease with which an individual can
be deflected from his present work and his plans
for the future.

While the work-oriented person attempts to
find expression for his inner drives and to
realize himself through his work, the pleasure-
oriented individual appears to be much.more
sensitive to the range of satisfactions outside
the work sphere.

Active andgpassive attitudinal traits.--These terms
are also used as they have been defined by Ginzberg et a1.

(1951, pp. 208, 210-11) as follows:

We are using these terms [active and passive]
merely to indicate a distinction between indi-
viduals who approach the problem of making an
occupational choice by ”actively” seeking to find
the best answer, and those who seem to reach a
resolution largely by a "passive” response in
which outside forces and influences propel them
to a choice.

A more fundamental distinction [between ac-
tive and passive persons] is the intensity of concern.
The active person seeks a deeper understanding of the
essential elements in his own personality--interests,
capacities, and values--to which he desires to give
expression in his occupational choice. The passive
individual acts as if he assumed the occupational
choice either would be made for him by someone else

no.

7

or would be the more or less inevitable outcome of
current experiences and exposures. He seems to be-
lieve there is relatively little he can do to deter-
mine the outcome. When an opportunity is offered, he
may grasp it, but he will do little to create one.
To the observer he may appear to be floundering.

Social class.--The following definition from Ellis

 

(1959) will be used: "Persons of similar social rank in a
community or a society who are socio-culturally demarcated
from other aggregates of dissimilar social rank."

Occupational categories.--These are discrete social
categories comprised of various occupations. Such cate-
gories permit us, ". . . to compare highly disparite occu-
pations and think of them as approximately equal in pres-f
tige, such as a newspaper columnist, electrician and
bookkeeper." This conceptualization was taken from Kahl
(1957, p. 77).

Realistic occupational choice.--This is the type of
decision which, according to Ginzberg and his associates
(1951, pp. 95-117), youth usually make during the realistic
period. Young people typically crystallize their occupa-
tional choice before the close of this period. During the
realistic period, youth give increasing attention to the
realities of the world of work as youth perceive them in
relation to their individual values, interests and apti-
'tudes. The typical vocational plan which young people have
at this time is the result of their ability to make a com-
promise between external reality and internal values,

itherests, and capabilities.

lea

cc:

F‘ 1‘

Lu.

8

d n

8

In this study the phrase'realistic occupational
choice"is shorn of its original developmental meaning, un-
less otherwise indicated. The phrase is used to denote the
compromise process described above, and the concept is
applied to the study of tentative occupational choice
rather than the more general problem of occupational choice.

Crystallization and apparent cpystallization of oc-
cupational choice.--Ginzberg g£_gl. (1951, pp. 107-108)
have defined the terms as follows:

Crystallization is the process whereby the individual
is finally able to synthesize the many forces, in-
ternal and external, that have relevance for his de-
cision. The actual process cannot be observed save
in retrospect; this is true not only for the observer,
but for the individual. It is a commitment, and the
individual recognizes this by his willingness to
bring his explorations to a close and by his ability
to make definite plans for the future, subject to
change in details.

This firmness of commitment differentiates an actual
crystallization from the apparent one of the fifteen-
and sixteen-year olds. The high school junior has
seldom had an opportunity to test the strategic ele-
ments in his tentative choice and has therefore been
unable to weigh its appeal for him. Moreover, he

has not yet confronted the wide range of alternatives
that will probably open in college. Of course, his
tentative choice may remain the final one, but he
cannot determine this without considerable explora-
tion.

Occupational key.--This is similar to the scoring
.key which commonly accompanies standardized achievement
tests, for instance. Occupational keys, unlike achievement
test keys, are not constructed on the basis of the test
Inaker's notion of the correct response to each test item.
Occupational keys are made in such a way that the most

popular answer to an item, among a sample of the members of

aperti

b. H.‘

V». u.
use lit
of occu

sent.

“a.
"A
..“q

‘1

Ne.

«“Eer

‘
w,‘ g

““‘Q‘

9

a particular occupation, constitutes the "correct response"

to the item. The number of keys which are available for

use with a particular inventory will depend upon the number

of occupations sampled in the standardization of the instru-

ment.

References

 

Allport, Gordon W. Personality: A Psychological Interpreta-
tion. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937.

Brookover, Wilbur B., and Gottlieb, David. A Sociology of
Education. 2d ed. revised. New York: American Book
COo, 1961}.

Edwards, T. Bentley3and Wilson, Alan B. "Attitudes Toward
the Study of School Subjects," Educational TheOpy,
VIII (October, 1958), 275-83 and 285.

 

Ellis, Robert A. Glossary of terms handed out in the
author's social stratification class. 1959. (Spirit
duplicated.)

Gilger, George A., Jr. "Declarations of Vocational Inter-
ests," Occupations, XX (January, 19h2), 276-79.

Ginzberg, Eli, et a1. Occupational Choice: An Approach to a
General Theory. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1951.

 

Gross, Carl H., Wronski, Stanley P., and Hansen, John W.
School and Society: Readings in the Social and
Philosophical Foundations of Education. Boston:
D. C. Heath 000, 1962.

 

Holloway, Robert B., and Berreman, Joel V. "The Educational
and Occupational Aspirations and Plans of Negro and
White Male Elementary School Students." Pacific
Sociological Review, II (Fall, 1959), 56-50.

.Kahl, Joseph A. The American Class Structure. New York:
Rinehart, 1957.

ILockwood, William V. "Realism of Vocational Preference,"
Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXVII (October,
1958), 98-106.

lO

Mehenti, Perin M. "Agreement Between Vocational Preference
and Inventoried Interest in Relation to Some Pre-
sumed Indices of Vocational Maturity." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 195h.
(Microfilmed.)

Porter, Richard J. "Predicting Vocational Plans of High
School Senior Boys," Personnel and Guidance Journal,
XXXIII (December, l95h), 215-18.

Reisner, Martin. "A Comparative Investigation of Personality
Factors Associated With Appropriate and Inappropri-
ate Levels of Vocational Aspiration." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1956. (Ab-
stracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. 17, No. 3,
1957. pp- 678-79.)

Ryan, John F. X. "Study of Certain Factors Affecting Real-
istic and Unrealistic Choice of an Occupation." Un-
published Ed.D. dissertation, New York University,
1953. (Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.
XIV, No. A, 195A, pp.’61§;20:)

Stephenson, Richard M. "Mobility Orientation and Stratifi-
cation of 1,000 Ninth Graders," American Sociologi-
cal Review,XXII(April, 1957), ZOE-11. (a)

. "Realism of Vocational Choice: A Critique and an
Example," Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXV

(April, 1957), h82-88. (b)

Super, Donald E. "Vocational Interests and Vocational
Choice: Present Knowledge and Future Research in
their Relationships," Educational and Psychological
Measurement, VII (Autumn, 19h7), 375183.

 

Trow, William C. "Phantasy and Vocational Choice," Occupa-
tions, XX (November, l9hl), 89-93.

Warner, W. Lloyd, Havighurst, Robert J., and Loeb, Martin.
Who Shall Be Educated?: The Challenge of Unequal
Opportunities. New York: Harper & Bros., l9hh.

CHAPTER II
BACKGROUND RESEARCH

The Extent of Realism of Vocational Choice
Among_Adolescents

When Byrns (1939) and Stephenson (1957a; 1957b)
compared the vocational expectations of secondary school
boys with the distribution of workers in the occupational
structure, both investigators found this: (1) the percent-
age of boys planning to enter the professions was much
greater than the percentage of professionals in the working
force, and (2) the ratio was reversed for the unskilled,
semi-skilled and skilled occupations. Carp (19h9) reported
that only 29 per cent of the high school boys he studied
expected to enter their father's occupation. Youmans'
(195h, 1956) data, from a very large sample of Michigan
tugh school males, show that a great many boys with fathers
Who are manual workers expect to avoid manual-type work
themselves. Although it is very difficult to measure inter-
senerational mobility, the NORC data presented by Kahl
(1957) indicate that the boys' expectations are more san-
guine than realistic. Examination of Stephenson's, Carp's,
Byrns' and Youmans' findings suggest that there are a great

nuunber of older boys who have occupational plans out of

11

1h

sen

V
AF

Va

3’8.“

’-
:-E
“‘1.
“It

er.

"l

b‘.
.‘

{I

12
line with available Opportunities.

Byrns (1939), using a sample of all the high school
seniors in Wisconsin, also investigated the distribution of
scholastic ability scores among students expecting to enter
various occupational groups. She uncovered substantial
numbers of reapondents whom she concluded did not possess
the necessary ability for the work of their choice. {Jones
(19h0), having noted that graduating high school students
plan to enter mostly those positions at the top of the oc-
cupational hierarchy, correlated a measure of his respond-
ents' academic achievement with their expected occupation's
prestige rating. He obtained any; for the boys of only
.20. Both these studies have been used to show that there
is a substantial proportion of older adolescent boys whose
intellectual ability is not congruent with their occupa-
tional plans.

The questionnaire-type studies just reviewed ob-
scure the fact that in recent years a high preportion of
lower-class, male youth have occupational aspirations which
are unrealistically low. This assertion is based upon con-
sideration both of the manner in which the studies' results
Here obtained and of recent changes in the nation's occupa-
tional structure. Ginzberg and his associates (1951,

P~ 155), after intensive interviews with seventeen lower-
class, male youth, concluded that almost all their voca-
t1Onal expectations were "passive and stunted". Dresden

(159h8) presents a plausable explanation of why Ginzberg's

13
results depart so much from the general picture of over-
aspiration among youth. She asserts that, on the basis of
her experience as a high school counselor, interviews with
lower-class students elicit much.more modest vocational as-
pirations than do questionnaires. Mills (1951) and Kahl
(1957) have presented well-documented descriptions of the
tremendous expansion of lower-echelon, white-collar posi-
tions in American society. Part of this expansion is the
result of industry's demand for electronic technicians, en-
gineers helpers, draftsmen, and many other semi-professional
workers. When one looks at both the depressed vocational
expectations of lower-class boys and the current occupation-
al opportunities which exist, it appears that this group
has plans which are unrealistic, but in a way which departs
from the usual use of the term.

Lockwood (1958) contends the survey method used in
the studies just reviewed have a serious weakness: they
tell us little about the decisions of individuals, only of
groups. Among almost any group of adolescents expecting or
wanting to enter a major profession, for instance, there
Will be some who are qualified and some who are not. It
would be wise for some youths to enter a less prestigeful
and demanding occupation than their father's while the op-
Posite would be true for talented lower-class boys.
Studies of individual cases are needed, therefore, to find
Possible sources of rational planning in this area. Most

Of. the recent research (Lockwood, 1958; Ryan, 1953; Super

and

(I!
c r
(D

C-)

‘1,-
1 n

l

“are

va:
I

«r'

11;
and.Overstreet, 1960; Mehenti, l95h; Reisner, 1956;
Ostermann, 1962) about realism in occupational decisions
have employed this method.

Mehenti (l95h) reported a study of 12h ninth-grade
boys which provides objective evidence of the extent of re-
alism of vocational choice among adolescents. Using a sim-
plified version of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank and
Darley's (19h1) rating method, Mehenti was able to classify
93 of her respondents as follows: NO per cent had interests
like those of men in each boy's preferred occupation; 22 per
cent probably had interests similar to members of each boy's

preferred occupation; and 38 per cent did not have the same

interests. One may conclude that somewhere between NO and
62 per cent of the boys had appropriate preferences, using
congruency of vocational preference with interests as an
index of realism. Some of the students classed as probably
having interests like those of men in the students' se-
lected occupation are very likely not to possess such in-
terests.

A study by Lockwood (1958) suggests that when high
school seniors are classified as either realistic or un-
realistic on the basis of a number of criteria, the results
are much different from Mehenti's. Lockwood used a random
sample of 508 students graduating from the academic second-
ary schools in Baltimore. His judges used criteria, such
em mental ability, grade-point average, and work experience, )

‘flfleh only indicate hOW‘Well an individual is suited for an

1S
occupation. No attempt was made to include employment op-
portunities as a criterion. Ninety-five per cent of the
students were considered to have realistic preferences and
only five per cent unrealistic preferences.

The extremely high proportion of appropriate pref-
erences found by Lockwood can probably be explained in two
ways. First, the counselors' ratings were contaminated by
their knowledge of the students' ability. Second, there
was a ceiling effect operating which made the results partly
an artifact of the study's design. The second interpreta-
tion is based on the assumption that the lack of realism of
vocational preference found in surveys is largely the result
of students' aspiring to the most prestigeful occupations.
It also assumes that the youth of Baltimore who graduate
from the city's academic high schools are the public school
students most likely to qualify for the top-ranked occupa-
tions. In short, it would be more difficult for this group
to over-aspire than any other group of public school grad-

uates in the city.

The Lockwood and Mehenti studies illustrate certain
weaknesses and strengths found in investigations of appro-
priateness of vocational choice involving the rating of in-
dividuals. Mehenti used a limited measure of realism of
vocational preference but her use of the Strong Vocational
Interest Blank made it possible to interpret her results.
Imckwood's measure of the same variable is more molar, less

atomistic, but it is difficult to interpret his results.

16
This is partly due to his clinical-type method of classify-
ing his respondents and is partly due to other weaknesses

in his research design.

Research on the Correlates of Realism
of Vocational Choice

This review includes studies of students in both

secondary schools and colleges. The literature centers
around the following correlates: knowledge about occupa-
tions, knowledge about self, sources of knowledge used in
making a choice, attitudinal traits, pressure from parents
or parent surrogates, and emotional maladjustment.
Knowledge about occupations.--Dar1ey and Hagenah
(1955). Ausubel (195A), Nicholas (1963), and others claim
that students must have adequate knowledge of existing vo-
cations before they can make realistic vocational decisions.
Although this claim could be tested by a carefully designed
experiment, this does not appear to have been done. The
generalization is supported by indirect evidence only.
Sinnett (1956), for instance, found rank-order correlations
(W) ranging from .50 to .69 between vocational preference-
interests congruency and the temporal order of job under-
standing. High congruency is positively associated with
early understanding of the occupation. Sinnett also found
rank-order correlations ranging from..58 to .69 between vo-
cational preference-interests congruency and the complexity
Of the occupations. In his study, Wallace (19h9) discover-

ed that college men who had had a greater opportunity to

17
learn about their chosen occupation showed less discrepancy
between their inventoried interests and choice than the
students with less opportunity to gain such knowledge.
Ginzberg g£_gl. (1951) concluded from their intensive inter-
viewing of adolescent boys that the choice of an occupation
requires an expanding knowledge of the world--presumably
including the world of work.

Reisner (1956), Lockwood (1958), and Ryan (1953)
concluded from their research that there is a positive re-
lationship between scholastic ability and realism of voca-
tional preference. Such a conclusion provides tenuous but
additional support for the importance of occupational know-
ledge in the process of occupational choice, assuming that
bright students possess more occupational information than
students who are not bright. It should be realized, how-
ever, that all three of the investigations cited above suf-
fer from.the two weaknesses of design mentioned earlier.
The use of a vocational interest inventory as a criterion
for appropriateness of vocational choice would avoid these
weaknesses and, thus, provide an improved test of the above
generalization concerning knowledge of occupations.

Knowledge of self.--Dar1ey and Hagenah (1955),
Ausubel (195h), Nicholas (1963), and others also conclude
that a lack of self-knowledge is a source of irrational vo-
cational decisions. Ostermann (1962) and Ryan (1953) found
that college students who are accurate in making estimates

of their class standing and of their mental ability scores,

.u»
I

18
respectively, are also realistic in their occupational
choices. Ginzberg gp_gl. (1951, p. 202) conclude that an
adolescent must, "enlarge his knowledge and improve his
evaluation of himself" to successfully resolve the problem
of occupational choice. No study appears to have been made
concerning the relationship between ability to estimate
one's interests and appr0priateness of vocational choice
among high school boys. Furthermore, no one seems to have
tested the generalizability of the above conclusions to
high school boys.

Crosby and Winsor (l9hl), in their study of college
students, found a rank correlation (Rho) of .h2 between the
students' scholastic aptitude and success in estimating
their own inventoried interests. Although this correlation
is not high, it does support the notion that bright stu-
dents make appropriate choices because they know more about
themselves than students who are not so bright. wrenn
(1935), in comparing two groups of junior college students
which differed very markedly in scholastic ability, found
that the higher achievers had the more congruent vocational
preferences and interests.

All the above studies suggest that self-knowledge
plays an important role in the making of an appropriate oc-
cupational choice but they leave certain questions un-
answered. For instance, how important is one's ability to
ampere one's vocational interests to those of men in one's

chosen line of work? Is it possible to obtain similar

19
results with adolescents in high school?

Personality traits.--According to the investigation
by Ginzberg g£_31. (1951), adolescents must be able to com-
promise, to delay gratification and to appreciate ends-
means relationships, if adolescents are to arrive at an oc-
cupational choice other than by default. Apparently no one
else has attempted to test this conclusion, however. The
same authors have asserted that their work-oriented sub-
jects were more successful in making occupational choices
than were their pleasure-oriented subjects. McArthur
(195A) hypothesized that the middle-class, public school
graduate who attends Harvard as an undergraduate views his
chosen occupation as a means to prove his own worth to him-
self and to others. Mahone (1960) was able to show that
high Q Achievement, coupled with low anxiety, is positively
related to congruency of vocational preference and inter-
ests.

Ginzberg g£_gl. also concluded that an active, as
opposed to a passive, attitude is required to resolve the
problem of selecting an occupation. Super and Overstreet
(1960), in their longitudinal study of vocational maturity,
discovered that acceptance of the necessity for making a
ckmice is related to vocational maturity. McArthur (l95h)
lxypothesized that students for whom the Strong Vocational
lusterest Blank shows the greatest predictive validity also
make the greatest effort to obtain help from others quali-

fied to assist them in making a successful choice.

20
Wallace (19h9) concluded that men whose occupational plans
are consonant with their interests report more contacts
with counselors than men with non-consonant plans and in-
terests. His conclusion tends to bear out McArthur's
hypothesis.

Ginzberg's outline of a theory of occupational de-
cision making asserts that the following attitudinal traits
are necessary for the crystallization of vocational choice:
flexibility, willingness to delay gratification, appreci-
ation of ends-means relationships, ambition and vocational
involvement. The related research just reviewed suggests
some means to indirectly test his generalization. If re-
spondents high on vocational choice-interests congruency
were found to be high on number of visits to their counse-
lor, compared to respondents low on the same variable; this
would support Ginzberg's notion about ambition and voca-
tional involvement. The same thing could be said regarding
the number of occupational information sources a respondent
uses in making his choice.

Cohen (1955), Bernstein (1958), and Riessman
(1962), in writing about the culture of social classes, de-
scribe how the lower-class sub-culture fails to transmit at-
titudes of flexibility and delayed gratification.
(Einzberg's interviewers noted a marked passivity regarding
occupational choice among the lower-class adolescents they
interviewed. McArthur concluded from descriptions of

social class sub-cultures that the middle-class exemplifies,

21
par excellence, the work orientation and active orientation
which Ginzberg g£_gl. have described. This suggests the
use of social stratification as a crude index of the above
attitudinal traits.

Apparent crystallization of vocational choice.--
Wallace's (19h9) study suggests that college men with a
crystallized choice are more apt to select a vocation con-
sonant with their interests than students with a less crys-
tallized choice. It is not known whether this same rela-
tionship holds for the apparent crystallization of choice
characteristic of some youth in the tentative vocational
choice period.

Parental pressure to over-aspire.--This is fre-
quently listed as one source of the lack of realism of oc-
cupational choice among youth (Korner, 19h6; Darley and
Hagenah, 1955; Ausubel, l95h). However, no research em-
ploying a suitable criterion of such realism appears to
have been conducted regarding the effects of parental pres-
sure upon children to over-aspire.

Emotional maladjustment.--Korner (l9h6), Ginzberg
gflg_gl. (1951), and others assert that emotional maladjust-
ment is another source of inadequate realism in occupa-
‘tiOhal choice. There seems to be no published evidence
using satisfactory criteria for the dependent variable to
support this conclusion. There are dissertations by Ryan
(1953); Reisner (1956); Aalto (1959); and Kinnane (1958)

focusing on this subject but their findings, taken as a

22

whole, do not afford support for the conclusion.

References

Aalto, Ensio E. ”Psychological Factors Associated with Ap-
propriateness and Inappropriateness of Vocational
Choices." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univer-
sity of Minnesota, 1959. (Abstracted in Disserta-
tion Abstracts, Vol. XX, No. h, 1959, p. 1262.)

Ausubel, David P. Theory_and Problemngf Adolescent De-
velopment. New York: Grune & Stratton, 195h.

Bernstein, Basile. "Some Sociological Determinants of Per-
ception," British Journal of Sociology, IX (June,

1958): 159'7h°

Byrns, Ruth. "Relation of Vocational Choice to Mental
Ability and Occupational Opportunity," School Re-
view, ILVII (February, 1939), 101-109.

 

Carp, Frances M. "High School Boys are Realistic About Oc-
cupations," Occupations, XXVIII (November, 19h9),

97-99.

Cohen, Albert K. Eplingpent Boys: The Culture of the Gang.
Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1935.

Crosby, R. C., and Winsor, A. L. "The Validity of Students'
Estimates of Their Interests " Journal of Applied
Psychology, XXV (l9hl), hOB-Alh.

‘ Darley, John G. Clinical Aspects apgpInterpretation of the
§trong Vocational Interest Blank. New York:
Psychological Corportion, 19E1.

, and Hagenah, Theda. Vocational Interest Measure-
ment: Theoryfiand Practice. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1955:

iDresden, Katharine W. "Vocational Choices of Secondary
Pupils," Occppations, XVII (November, 19h8), 10h-
10 .

(3inzberg, Eli, et a1. Occupationaljghoice: An Approach to a
General Theor . New York: Columbia University
Press, 1951.

Jones, Edward S. "Relation of Ability to Preferred and
Probable Occupation," Educational Administration
and Supervision, XXVI (March, 19h0), 220-26.

23

Kahl, Joseph A. The American Class Structure. New York:
Rinehart, 1957.

Kinnane, John F. "The Relationship of Personal Adjustment
to Realism of Expressed Vocational Preference."
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University,
1958. (Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.
XIX, No. 1, 1958, p. 172.)

Korner, Anneliese F. "Origin of Impractical or Unrealistic
Vocational Goals,’ Journal of Consulting Psychology,
X (November-December, 19E6), 327-3h.

Lockwood, William V. "Realism of Vocational Preference,"
Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXVII (October,
1958), 98-106.

McArthur, Charles. "Long-Term Validity of the Strong Inter-
est Test in Two Subcultures," Journal of Applied
Psychology, XXXVIII (October, 195A), 3u6-53.

 

Mahone, Charles H. "Fear of Failure and Unrealistic Voca-
tional Aspiration," Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, LX (March, 1960), 253-61.

Mehenti, Perin M. "Agreement Between Vocational Preference
and Inventoried Interest in Relation to Some Pre-
sumed Indices of Vocational Maturity." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 195A.
(Microfilmed.)

Mills, C. Wright. White Collar: The American Middle Classes.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.

Nicholas, Phoebe Overstreet. "Vocational Development," 12
Arthur T. Jerseld, The Psychology of Adolescence.
New York: Macmillan Co., 1963. Chapter XVII.

Ostermann, Robert F. "A Study of the Relationship of the
Realism of the Occupational Choices of College
Freshmen and the Accuracy of Self-Estimates of
Their General Ability." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Fordham University, 1962. (Abstracted in Eig-
sertation Abstracts, Vol. XXIII, No. 9, 1963, p.
32h0o)

Reisner, Martin. "A Comparative Investigation of Personality
Factors Associated with Appropriate and Inappropri-
ate Levels of Vocational Aspiration." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1956. (Ab-
stracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. 17, No. 3,

1957. PP. 678-79.)

2h

Riessman, Frank. The Culturally Deprived Child. New York:
Harper and Bros., 1962.

Ryan, John F. X. "Study of Certain Factors Affecting Real-
istic and Unrealistic Choice of an Occupation." Un-
published Ed.D. dissertation, New York University,
1953. (Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.
XIV, No. A, 195k, pp.—619-20.)

Sinnett, E. Robert. "Some Determinants of Agreement Between
Measured and Expressed Interests," Educational and
Psychological Measurement, XVI (Spring, 1956),
110-18.

Stephenson, Richard M. "Mobility Orientation and Stratifi-
cation of 1,000 Ninth Graders," American Sociologi-
cal Review, XXII(April, 1957), 2011-11. (a)

. "Realism of Vocational Choice: A Critique and an
Example," Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXV
(April, 1957), u82-88. (b)

Super, Donald E., Overstreet, Phoebe L., et al. The Voca-
tional Maturity of Ninth-Grade Boys. ("Horace Mann-
Lincoln Institute of School Experimentation Career
Pattern Study Monographs," No. 2.) New York: Bureau
of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia Univer-
sity, 1960.

Wallace, Wimburn L. "The Relationship of Certain Variables
to Discrepancy Between Expressed and Inventoried
Vocational Interest." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Michigan, l9u9. (Microfilmed.)

‘Wrenn, C. Gilbert. "Intelligence and the Vocational Choices
of College Students," Educational Record, XVI
(April. 1935). 217-19.

Ybumans, E. Grant. "Social Factors in the Work Attitudes and
Interests of Twelfth Grade Michigan Boys," Journal
of Educational Sociology, XXVIII (September, 195H),

35:h8.

. "Occupational Expectations of Twelfth Grade
Michi an Boys," Journal of Egperimental Education,
XXIV June, 1956), 259-71.

 

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES, QUESTIONS,
AND GENERAL PROCEDURES

Hypotheses and a Question About Knowledge

of Self and of Occupations

Ginzberg's (1951) tentative theory of occupational
choice proposes that there is a positive correlation be-
tween knowledge of self and realism of occupational choice.
The results of two investigations with college students
support the prOposition. Ostermann (1962) found that stu-
dents with realistic vocational choices made more accurate
estimates of their class standing with regard to grades
than did students with unrealistic choices. Ryan's (1953)
realistic group made more accurate estimates of their mental
ability scores than his unrealistic group was able to do.

No studies of the relationship between estimates of
one's interests and the apprOpriateness of one's occupation-
al choice appear to have been made. However, it is reason-
able to assume that the relationship would be parallel to
the association between scholastic ability and realism of
vocational choice reported in the above studies.

The following hypothesis will be tested to determine

the applicability of Ginzberg's theory to the population

25

26
used in this study:
The congruent sub-sample will have higher ratings
on estimating their scholastic ability and their
vocational interests than will the incongruent
sub-sample.

Ginzberg's theory also postulates that the success-
ful resolution of the need to make a vocational decision
requires an increasing knowledge of occupations themselves.
The generalization gives considerable weight to the cogni-
tive dimension of occupational choice and suggests that re-
alism.of choice is correlated with academic ability. In
other words, young people who have the ability to learn~
what is necessary to do well on scholastic ability tests
can be expected, other things being equal, also to do well
in learning about various prospective vocations.

If cognitive ability plays a large role in the at-
tainment of a realistic occupational choice, then one would
expect bright boys to have a better record in this respect
than boys who are not bright. This is precisely what
Reisner (1956), Ryan (1953), and Wrenn (1935) concluded
after studying college students' vocational preferences.

It is quite likely, however, that the appropriateness-of-
choice ratings made by the judges in the first two studies
were contaminated by the judges' knowledge of the subjects'
academic ability. Furthermore, there is a ceiling effect
operating in such studies which makes over-sepiration among

boys who are average and below average in academic aptitude

more probable than among boys who are above average.

27
Wrenn's earlier study does not exhibit these weaknesses be-
cause he used vocational choice-interests congruency as his
sole criterion of appropriateness of occupational choice.
However, Wrenn compared a group of junior college students
whose scholastic ability scores were extremely high with
another group whose scores were extremely low. It would
not be safe to make inferences from his sub-samples to
those used in this study.

All of the research discussed in this section--
including the study by Ginzberg and his associates--was
conducted either primarily or exclusively with college stu-
dents. The students usually expect to enter vocations in
the middle or upper socio-economic strata, and it is these
occupations about which it is most difficult to learn.
Learning about such vocations makes more demands upon one's
mental ability than learning about occupations in the lower
socio-economic strata. This means that the importance
which Ginzberg's theory gives cognition may be over-
emphasized with regard to high school boys' tentative oc-
cupational choices because a relatively high proportion of
the boys expect to enter lines of work in the lower strata.
Lockwood (1958) found that his sub-sample of high school
students considered to have made an appropriate choice was
brighter than his sub-sample of students judged to have
made an inappropriate choice. This study, however, has the
same methodological weaknesses as Reisner's and Ryan's

studies.

28
Although there is a considerable amount of research

which appears to emphasize the importance of cognition in
arriving at a realistic occupational choice, there are at
least three reasons for questioning this notion as it ap-
plies to the tentative occupational choice of high school
boys. First, many of the studies have serious methodologi-
cal defects. Second, most of the studies involve students
at the college level. Third, most of the investigations
involve vocations requiring the most complex role behavior.
In order to directly assess cognition's role in the making
of tentative occupational choices, the following research
question was posed:

Will the respondents in the congruent group have a

higher mean scholastic ability score than the re-

spondents comprising the incongruent group?

The authors of Occupational Choice (Ginzberg g£_21.,

1951) give little attention,in their theory, to the quality
of boys' sources of knowledge about the world of work.
From the theory, however, it is possible to deduce that the
occupational knowledge which boys require is better ob-
tained from certain sources than from others. The results
of Wallace's (19h9) study very tentatively imply that there
is a positive association between occupational choice-
interests congruency and the degree to which college stu-
dents rely upon the following sources of information about
their chosen vocation: friends, school or teachers, books
and literature, and work experience. The following hypoth-

esis has been designed to test the above corollary to

29

Ginzberg's theory:

The proportion of the congruent group reporting one
of the following as its most important source of
information will be larger than the proportion of
the incongruent group mentioning the same source:
friends, teachers, school, books and magazines,

and work experience.

Apparently, no one has determined whether or not there are

sources of information, other than the above, which are

likely either to promote or to hinder the making of an ap-

propriate vocational choice. Therefore, the following

question was asked in order to shed some light upon the

matter:

Does the congruent sub-sample differ from the in-
congruent sub-sample in terms of the proportion
of respondents who report one of the following as
their main source of information regarding their
tentatively chosen occupation: family, rela-

tives,

counselors, movies and TV, observation,

leisure-time activities, and examination of the
products of an occupational group?

One would expect, as a corollary of Ginzberg's

theory, that the following are positively associated with

vocational
visits one
sources of
vocational
for number

the number

choice-interests congruency: the number of

makes to one's counselor and the number of
information one uses to arrive at a tentative
choice. Wallace (l9h9) found such an association
of counselor visits but he did not investigate

of information sources his respondents had used.

The hypothesis which follows is based upon the above de-

ductions:

Members of the congruent group make more visits to
their school counselor and use more sources of in-
formation when making a vocational choice than do

30
the members of the incongruent group.
Hypotheses Concerning
Attitudinal Traits

Eli Ginzberg and his associates maintain that com-
promise, delayed gratification, and a sense of temporal
order are essential requisites for successfully arriving at
a vocational choice. These attitudinal traits, taken to-
gether, appear to be synonymous with what Edwards and
Wilson (1958) call "prudentness".*

According to Ginzberg's theory, boys who possess an
inflexible adherence to extrinsic, immediate rewards and
who are unable to formulate and consistently pursue remote,
long-range goals will not make normal progress toward a
real crystallization of their choice. Both of these traits
together are very similar to Edwards' and Wilson's concept
of "immediateness".**

The above two propositions from Ginzberg's theory
may be tested using occupational choice-interests congru-
ency as the criterion for realism of occupational choice.
In order to conduct the test, the prepositions have been
rephrased using the terms "immediateness" and "prudentness"
to denote the attitudinal-trait variables described by
Ginzberg. The following hypothesis will be employed to

test the propositions:

 

*See page 5 for a definition of this term.
**See pages 5-6 for a definition of this term.

31
The congruent group will have higher scores for
prudentness and lower scores for immediateness
than will the incongruent group.

A number of studies suggest that a sizable propor-
tion of youth make tentative vocational choices which are
unrealistic. These studies have already been reviewed,*
and it is now time to look at two of them more carefully.
Stephenson (1957a; 1957b) and Youmans (l95h, 1956) both
cross-tabulated their data according to the occupational
level of each reSpondent's father and according to the oc-
cupational level of each respondent's expected vocation.
"Expected vocation" was defined in terms of the occupation
a boy expects or plans to enter rather than what he would
like to enter upon finishing his education. As one would
expect, the overwhelming majority of the respondents with
fathers in the top occupational levels expected to follow
in their father's footsteps.

The same trend toward the most prestigeful levels
and away from the least prestigeful levels is observable in
the answers of respondents whose fathers were classed as
manual workers. About twenty per cent of the latter group
of boys; for instance, reported they were planning to enter
professional occupations.

While the surveys conducted by Stephenson and
Youmans suggest that youth from middle-class families are

more realistic about their vocational expectations than are

 

*See pages 11-12.

32
lower-class youth, the surveys' findings are not definitive.
This is because both studies lack a clear-cut criterion for
assessing realism of occupational choice. Tentative occu-
pational choice-vocational interests congruency is an ob-
jective measure of this variable, however, and it should be
possible to use it to shed light upon the relative realism
of choice exhibited by youth with different social—class
backgrounds. "How should it be used?", is the next ques-
tion which needs to be answered.

There is considerable agreement in the literature
that overaspiration is one of the most important sources of
the lack of realism in vocational choices among youth.
Merton (19h9, pp. 125-lh9) maintains that to aspire to up-
ward mobility is a value which pervades all levels of our
social structure, although not necessarily to the same de-
gree. This notion is supported by Stephenson's and Youmans'
data regarding vocational expectations as well as by Carp's
(l9h9) earlier findings. While certain social classes are
likely to value social mobility more than others, it also
seems very likely that most youth have taken on this value
to some extent. This is only part of the problem, however,
and the other facet has to do with the way young people
learn vocational interests.

According to Darley and Hagenah (1955, pp. l3h-193),
there is no general agreement concerning how vocational in-
terests are learned. There is some evidence, nonetheless,

'which.suggests that the learning of interests may be

33

explained in terms of socialization theory. The following
quotation by Merton, Reader,and Kendall (1957, p. 289) in-
dicates what is meant by socialization:

. . . the technical term socialization designates

the processes by which people selectively acquire

the values and attitudes, the interests, skills,

and knowledge--in short, the culture--current in

the groups of which they are, or seek to become,

a member. It refers to the learning of social

roles. . . . Socialization takes place primarily

through social interaction with peOple who are

significant for the individual . . . .
Strong (19h3, pp. 680-681) reported a study of one-hundred
and ten pairs of fathers and sons whose scores on twenty-
two scales of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank were
compared by correlation analysis. If interests are learned
through interaction with significant others--in this case,
fathers--one would expect to find a statistically signifi-
cant correlation between father's and son's SVIB scores.
The obtained correlation coefficients ranged between .11
and .h8 with an average of .29. The latter coefficient is
statistically significant. As a check, Strong correlated
the score of father A with the score of the son of father B
with the score of the son of father 0, etc. The average of
the resulting coefficients of correlation is-.O3. While
the father-son pairs which Strong studied were drawn from.a
population of middle-class respondents, one would predict
from socialization theory that a similar relation exists be-
tween the interests of lower- and upper-class fathers and

sons. Strong (19h3, pp. 185-215) demonstrated that the mem-

bers of occupational groups differ in their occupational

3h

interests; although, he also reported quite a bit of over-
lapping between adjacent groups in the prestige hierarchy.
This suggests that children who are socialized within the
matrices of different social classes develop patterns of
interests which are somewhat distinct from youngsters in
classes other than their own--again with quite a bit of
overlapping. It is time now to summarize what has been
said.

There is evidence from questionnaire-type surveys
which permits us to say that the great majority of youth
demonstrate the mobility orientation which.makes up part of
the American ethos. There is also some evidence--admittedly
slight--which indicates that members of social classes tend
to socialize their young in such a way as they develop pat-
terns of vocational interests which differ between classes.
One would expect, therefore, when congruency of occupational
choice and interests is used as a criterion of realism of
vocational choice, middle-class youths' choices would appear
to be more realistic than those of lower-class youth. This
is because a sizable prOportion of lower-class youth may be
expected to plan to enter middle-class occupations whose
members possess a pattern of vocational interests different
from those which the lower-class youth have learned within
their particular social class sub-culture. This may be suc-
cintly stated in the form of the following hypothesis:

Middle-class boys have tentative vocational choices

35

which are more consistent with their inventoried
vocational interests than do lower-class boys.

Question About Apparent Crystallization
of Occupational Choice

 

Crystallization of occupational choice is a synthe-
sis of values, interests, aptitudes, and objective reality
which leads to a commitment to a particular vocation.*

This synthesis, according to Ginzberg‘g§_gl. (1951), usual-
ly occurs between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one,
among the pOpulation they studied.

Ginzberg and his associates point out that crystal-
lization occurs after a person has had a chance to explore
and test the above elements of occupational choice. This
appears to mean that a person's crystallized choice is con-
gruent with his values, interests, aptitudes, as well as
with the realities of the occupational structure. There is
some evidence which supports this notion.

Wallace (l9h9) studied the relationship between oc-
cupational choice-interests congruency and what he termed
as self-conflict regarding vocational choice. This study
is relevant to Ginzberg's conclusions about crystallization
of choice because Wallace's notion of self-conflict is sim-
ilar to what Ginzberg refers to as the absence of a commit-
ment to a particular occupation.

Wallace found male college students whose vocation-

al choice was consonant with their measured vocational

 

*See page 8 for a more detailed definition.

36

interests showed less self-conflict regarding their deci-
sion than the students whose choice was not consonant with
their interests. He fashioned an index of self-conflict
using eight questionnaire items similar to Items g, h, 6, 7
and 8 in the questionnaire used in this study.* Wallace
used scores from the Strong Vocational Interest Blank as a
basis for dividing his sample into two sub-samples analo-
gous to the congruent and incongruent groups in this study.
When he compared the two sub-samples' mean self-conflict
scores, Wallace found the incongruent group had the higher
mean score. This supports Ginzberg's theory, as it applies
to the Columbia University students he studied.

Most of the boys studied in this investigation, un-
like upper-classmen in college, have not had the experience
necessary to test the components of vocational choice which
have been discussed (Ginzberg gp_gl., 1951, p. 108). There-
fore, one would not expect boys with high vocational choice-
interest congruency to differ from boys with low congruency
in terms of crystallization. This is because high school
students have not had the experiences which are necessary
for them to integrate their values, interests, and apti-
tudes so they are consonant with each student's vocational
expectation. All of this may be briefly stated in the form
of a question as follows:

Do boys who have made a tentative vocational choice
which is congruent with their inventoried vocational

 

*See Appendix A, pages 117-18.

37
interests differ in terms of crystallization of
occupational choice from boys who have made a
choice which is not congruent with their inter-
ests?
General Procedures

Sample.--The sample consists of 22A boys who were
eleventh graders in Berkeley, California, during the spring
of 196M. During the spring of 1959, Edwards and Wilson
(1961) collected certain data from h05 sixth-grade boys in
the Berkeley schools. The latter group constituted almost
all the male sixth graders in the school district. The
sample of 22h eleventh-grade boys consisted of all the NOS
boys in the original sample still attending school in
Berkeley in the spring of 196A.

The sample of 22h boys used in this study and the
group of 181 boys who had been among the group of h05 sixth
graders but who were no longer part of the same graduating
class were compared in terms of their socio-economic status
and race. This was done in order to determine what effect
attrition may have had upon the representativeness of the
smaller sample. Before describing how the two comparisons
were made, something should be said concerning the various
statistical tests which were used in making these and other
comparisons throughout the rest of the study.

The following four types of statistical tests were
employed, at one time or another, in the analysis of the
data collected in the investigation: (1) Kolmogorov-

Smirnov, (2) chi square, (3) difference between proportions,

38
and (A) Student's 3. Because most of the data were at the
ordinal level of measurement, it was necessary to rely a
great deal upon such non-parametric tests as the first two
listed. Every effort was made to utilize the most powerful
tests available yet, at the same time, to avoid violating
the assumptions involved in their mathematical models. Ex-
cept for the 5 tests, the .05 level of confidence was used
throughout the analysis of the data. One-tailed tests were
employed when the direction of the results had been pre-
dicted.

In contrasting the group of 22h respondents with the
group of 181 lost to attrition, a comparison of each group's
distribution of respondents among ten categories of father's
occupation* was made. The system of occupational categories
was developed by Edwards and Wilson (1961), and the cate-
gories appear to be ranked according to the prestige and the
level of skill and training associated with the occupations
in each category. By taking advantage of the ordinal nature
of these occupational data, the non-parametric--but nonethe-
less powerful--Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Blalock, 1960, pp.
203-206) was used to test the hypothesis that the two sam-
ples were drawn from the same population. Henceforth, the
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test will be referred to as the Smirnov
test. When the differences between the cumulative propor-

tions for the above two distributions were computed, the

 

*See Appendix D for a list of the occupational
categories.

39
largest difference (i.e., D) was found to equal .090. This
value was less than the .lhh necessary to reject the null
hypothesis at the .05 level of confidence.

The group of 22h boys and the group of 181 boys
were also compared in terms of the number of Negroes, Ori-
entals, and Caucasians in each group. This was done by
classifying the reapondents in each of the first two groups
according to race--see Table 1. Chi square (Walker and
TABLE 1.--Percentage of the reapondents who were sixth

graders in 1959 classified according to their enrollment
status in l96h and race

 

‘- -_i
J; T

 

 

 

Enrolled Not Enrolled
Ra“ (N=22h) (N=181)
Negro (N: 107) o o o o 2900 2302
Oriental (N3 30) o e o o 11.2 208
08110881811 (N: 26h.) o o o o 5908 71.8
No answer (N= LL) . . . . 0.0 2.2
Total (N==h05) . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

’x? - 18.063, df=3, p < .05 (two-tailed test)

Lev, 1953, pp. 99-100) was employed to estimate the likeli-
hood that the departure of the observed frequencies from
the expected frequencies was a chance occurrence. This test

is frequently used in analyzing data such as these which

to
are at the nominal level of measurement. The obtained 'X?
of 18.063 (df==3) was greater than the 7.815 associated
with the .05 level of confidence. Therefore, the null
hypothesis was rejected.

The group of 22h eleventh—grade students, from which
the congruent and incongruent sub—samples were drawn, does
not appear to be entirely representative of the larger
group of h05 sixth-grade students. Although the 181 youths
who were lost to attrition did not differ from the 22h still
enrolled in the Berkeley schools in l96h in terms of
father's occupation, the two groups did differ with regard
to race. Negroes and Orientals, particularly the latter,
were under-represented among the attrition group; whereas,
Caucasians were over-represented among the same group. This
finding is consistent with the general trend throughout the
country for whites to move from urban centers to the suburbs.
The research sample's lack of complete representativeness
suggests that any generalizations which are made from the
study of the congruent and incongruent sub-samples should
probably be limited to those high school boys whose families
do not comprise the geographically mobile segment of urban
residents.

Berkeley is a community of over 111,000 people
within the metropolitan San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. It
is the site of the University of California's main campus
which has an impact upon the community and the high school

which is impossible to measure but easy to observe. A high

Ln
proportion of the city's inhabitants are either retired or
active professional people, and there are sizable propor-
tions of various ethnic, racial, middle and lower socio-
economic groups residing there.

The Berkeley High School has over 3,000 students,
and because it is the city's only senior high school, it
draws from the entire community. The ratio of students to
each full-time counselor is about 250-300.

It is difficult to estimate the degree to which the
findings based upon this sample may be safely generalized
to other high school boys. For instance, it is not known
to what extent the following characteristics of the Berkeley
High School have affected the findings: (1) relatively low
ratio of full-time counselors to students; (2) no vocations
a1 orientation courses per se; and (3) a very wide variety
of course offerings. One should be very cautious, there-
fore, about making inferences from this sample to other
high school students until more is known about how such
factors effect the congruency between students' vocational
interests and their occupational choice.

Pro-testing the questionnaire, the direction sheets,
and the distribution and collection procedures.--A repre-
sentative group of thirty eleventh-grade boys in another
large but suburban high school was used to pre-test the
questionnaire. The school is located in the San Francisco-
Oakland Bay Area.

Collection of the data.--The following materials

a

1.2

were distributed by the investigator during a series of
small group meetings with the respondents: the question-
naire,* the interest inventory materials, and the spirit
duplicated directions for taking the inventory.** The meet-
ings were held during school hours. Both in these meetings
and in the written directions issued with the above materi-
als, the respondents were strongly directed to work inde-
pendently in responding to the items and to make their
answers as sincere as possible. All the students in the
sample were contacted at least once, and an attempt was made
to contact a second time each member of the sample who did
not return the materials as directed. During this follow-up
period, the investigator gained the impression that almost
all of the respondents filled out the material during their
study hall period.

The scholastic ability scores used in the study were
obtained from the school records. Almost all the other data
were obtained from the files of Dr. Edwards' and Dr.
Wilson's Academic Success Project (Edwards and Wilson, 1961).

One hundred and eighty-one students, or 80.8 per
cent of the sample, returned both the questionnaire and the
answer sheet for the interest inventory. These students
will be referred to as the "participant group" or simply

"participants".

 

*See Appendix A.

**See Appendix B.

A3

References

 

Blalock, Hubert M., Jr. Social Statistics. New York: McGraw-
Hill BOOk COO, 1960.

Darley, John G., and Hagenah, Theda. Vocational Interest
Measurement: Theory and Practice. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1935.

 

Edwards, T. Bentley,and Wilson, Alan B. "Attitudes Toward
the Study of School Subjects," Educational Theory,
VIII (October, 1958), 275-83 and 285.

. A Stugygof Some Social and Psychological Factors
Influencing Educational Achievement. A Final Report
to the United States Office of Education, Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare. Prepared by
the Authors Pursuant to CE Contract No. SAE 7787.
Berkeley, Calif.: Department of Education, Univer-
sity of California, June, 1961. (Mimeographed.)

 

Ginzberg, Eli, 9} a1. Occupational Choice: An Approach to a
General Theory. New York: Columbia University Press,

1951.

Lockwood, William V. "Realism of Vocational Preference,"
Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXVII (October,
1958), 98-106.

 

 

Merton, Robert K. Social Theoryiand Social Structure.
Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, l9u9.

., Reader, George G., and Kendall, Patricia L.
(eds.). The Student-Physician: Introductory Studies
in the Sociology of Medical Education. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957.

Ostermann, Robert F. "A Study of the Relationship of the
Realism of the Occupational Choices of College
Freshmen and the Accuracy of Self-Estimates of their
General Ability." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Fordham University, 1962. (Abstracted in Disserta-
tion Abstracts, Vol. XXIII, No. 9, 1963, p. 32E0.)

Reisner, Martin. "A Comparative Investigation of Personality
Factors Associated with Appropriate and Inappr0pri-
ate Levels of Vocational Aspiration.” Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1956. (Ab-
stracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. 17, No. 3,
1957a PPO 678479.

Ryan, John F. I. "Study of Certain Factors Affecting Real-
istic and Unrealistic Choice of an Occupation."

i

‘Q’

Ah

Unpublished Ed.D. dissertation, New York University,
1953. (Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.
XIV, No. A. 195u, pp. 619-20.)

Stephenson, Richard M. "Mobility Orientation and Stratifi-
cation of 1,000 Ninth Graders," American Sociolgge
ical Review, XXII (April, 1957), 20h-11. (eff

. "Realism of Vocational Choice: A Critique and an
Example," Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXV

(April, 1957). u82-88.Ib)

Strong, Edward K., Jr. Vocational Interests of Men and
Women. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

19E3.

Walker, Helen M., and Lev, Joseph. Statistical Inference.
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1953.

Wallace, Wimburn L. "The Relationship of Certain Variables
to Discrepancy Between Expressed and Inventoried
Vocational Interest." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Michigan, l9h9. (Abstracted in
Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. IX, No. 2, 19h9, pp.

173'7h0y

Wrenn, C. Gilbert. "Intelligence and the Vocational Choices
of College Students," Educational Record, XVI

(April. 1935), 217-19.

Youmans, E. Grant. "Social Factors in the Work Attitudes and
Interests of Twelfth Grade Michigan Boys," Journal
of Educational Sociolo , XXVIII (September, 195E),

359h3o

. ”Occupational Expectations of Twelfth Grade
Michi an Boys," Journal of Experimental Educatiog,
XXIV June, 19567, 259-71.

each
37139

ngm

CHAPTER IV

CONGRUENCY OF TENTATIVE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE
AND INVENTORIED VOCATIONAL INTERESTS

Tentative Occupational Choice

The one hundred and eighty-one participants in the
study were dichotomized into a congruent sub-sample and an
incongruent sub-sample. This bifurcation of the partici-
pants was accomplished on the basis of the congruency be-
tween their tentative occupational choice and their inven-
toried vocational interests. In order to form the two
sub-samples in this manner, it was necessary to ascertain
each participant's tentative occupational choice at the
outset. The respondents' occupational choice was determined
from their response to the second of the following two items
in the questionnaire:

a. If you had the chance to go into any kind of work
you wanted when you are all through with your ed-
ucation, what line of work would you choose?

Think only of what you would like to do, what you
would be happy at. Do not think about the abili-
ties required or the training which is necessary
to get into this kind of work. Just write down
the name of the line of work you would like to be
in. If you want more than one, write them down,
but put your favorite one first.

b. People sometimes think about what they would like
to be, although they don't really believe it

could come true. They also usually have a fair
idea of what they actually will do. Now think

1+5

116
about what you will really be when you are no

longer a student. What line of work do you
actually think you will be in at that time?

Give a specific line of work. For ex-

ample, write plumbing contracting" not

"plumbing business"; write "TV repairing", if

that is what you mean, rather than just

"electronics”; and use the words "mechanical

engineering" instead of only "engineer".

You may put down more than one kind of

work, if you wish, but put the one which you

think is most likely to come true first.

The purpose of Item a is to give the respondent a
chance to express his fantasy vocational preference thereby
maximizing the realism of his response to Item b. The sec-
ond item was made to elicit a vocational expectation rather
than a preference because an expectation appears to offer
the better prediction of what vocation the student will
actually enter. Dresden (l9h8) and Holloway and Berreman
(1959) have advocated the use of an expectation to indicate
vocational choice.

Results.--Out of the 182 students who returned a
questionnaire, 181 made an interpretable response to the
second item above. Of this group of 181 boys, 16h (90.6
per cent) reported a tentative occupational choice; 15 (8.3
per cent) did not report a choice; and 2 (1.1 per cent) in-
dicated an expectation of entering the military service.
The boys' choices were classifed into the fifty-eight types
of occupations listed in Column 1 of Table 1. The types of
occupations are ranked with the most popular one receiving

the highest ranking. Column 2 shows the distribution of

choices which the respondents wrote first.

1+7

TABLE 2.--Types of occupations chosen, number of times each
type was chosen, and percentage of choices which were
scorable

 

=
No. of Percentage
°f3°°upai°n 33:22:. “.3232?

(2) (3)

 

High school teacher . . . . . . 16 18.7
Engineer . . . . . . . . . . . 1h 100.0
Technician (e.g., mechanical,

aerodynamic, dental, elec-

tronic) . . . . . . . . . . . 10 60.0
Architect . . . . . . . . . . . 9 100.0
Automobile mechanic . . . . . . 7 100.0
Research scientist . . . . . . 7 85.7
Lawyer............ 6 100.0
Accountant . . . . . . . . . . 5 100.0
Forester or Conservationist . . 5 100.0
Photographer . . . . . . . . . 5 0.0
Salesman or broker (e.g.,

route, insurance, real

estate)....... 20

Musician . . . . . . .
Professional athlete .
Business administrator
College professor . .
Dentist . . . . .

I-"
O
o o

H
O

Auctioneer . . . .
Automobile assembly

'Orker o o o o 0
Automotive engineer
Barber 0 o o o o 0
Building contractor
Camp counselor . .

OOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
0
00000 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

i

O
[—1
O
o 0

Physician . . . . . . . . . . . 10 .
Psychiatrist . . . . . . . . . 10 .
Retail clerk . . . . . . . . . 10 .
Cosmetologist . . . . . . . . . .
Criminologist . . . . . . . . . .
Draftsman . . . . . . . . . . . .
Law enforcement officer . . . .

Mathematician . . . . . . . . . .
Oceanographer . . . . . . . . . .
Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 .
Social worker . . . . . . . . . .
Veterinarian . . . . . . . . . 10 .
Research assistan . . . . . . 5 .

1 n

HHHHH Hmmmmmmmmmmmwwwmwrrm

l-'
O

us

TABLE 2.--Continued

 

 

 

No. of Percentage

Times of Scorable
Types oflgccupation Chosen Choices

(2) (3)

 

Carpenter . . . .
Clerk typist . .
Economist . . . .
Electrician . . .
Florist . . . . .
Government official

e

. O O 0 0
FH-
00
000000000000
0 O O O 0

Grounds keeper
Heavy machinery op r
IBM worker . . .
Machinist . . . .
Military officer
Newspaper reporter
Pharmacist . . . .
Pharmacist's helper
Postal worker . . .
Psychologist . . .
Rocket builder and f
Roller-derby skater
Secretary. 0 o o 0
Sheet metal worker
Truck driver . . .
U.S. Senator . . .
Warehouseman . . . . .
No tentative occupational
choice . . . . . . . . . . .
Uninterpretable 0 military
semiceeeooooocooo

t r

en-
cm:
04:

H
O

O

y r

H
0
000000000
0

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

00000000000000.00000000

oooool-Joeoooooomooooooo

o
O O O O O O

O O C O O O O O O O C O O O O O O O O O O C O
O O O O O O O O O O O Q 0 O O O O O O O O O O
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
H
C)

H
b.) U1
0 o
o o

 

TOtal 00000000....0 182 000

 

Inventoried Vocational Interests
In order to measure a boy's occupational choice-

interests congruency, it is necessary not only to know his

119

occupational choice but to measure his vocational interests
as well. All of the one hundred and sixty boys who reported
a tentative occupational choice completed the vocational in-
terest inventory used to assess their interests.

Measurement.--The Kuder Preference Record-Occupa-

 

tional Form D (Kuder, 1961) was used to measure the respond-
ents' vocational interests. This particular inventory was
used rather than the Strong Vocational Interest Blank be-
cause the KPR-O, i.e., the Kuder Preference Record-Occupa-
tional, is easier to administer than the Strong. The aim-
pler content of the KPR-O was also an important consider-
ation because the respondents were relatively young and rep-

resented a wide range of abilities. The shorter testing

time of the Kuder was another advantage because the students
took the inventory on their own time.

Kuder (1961) reports that the median coefficient of
reliability for us KPH-0 keys is .78. It is based upon two
administrations of the inventory, one month apart, to 96
high school students. The inventory's validity is indicated
by its power to differentiate between a group of men-in-
general and various occupational groups. The men-in-general
norm group used to standardize the instrument consisted of
1,000 men selected to represent a cross-section of various
regions and different-sized communities throughout the
country. The occupational norm groups usually consisted of

about 200 members of an occupational organization the mem-

bers of which are distributed over the entire country.

r1

50

Kuder developed a Verification Key for the KPR-O.
The key is designed to detect a pattern of responses due to
any of the following: failure to understand the directions,
difficulty in understanding the content, or carelessness or
insincerity in answering the questions. Each respondent's
answers were scored.with the Verification Key, and if they
scored AA or less, they were not included in the analysis.
This procedure resulted in the use of cases that fall within
Kuder's (1961, p. 1h) "doubtful" range. However, because
his intervals were developed on the basis of adult groups
whose patterns of interests are known to have more structure
than that of adolescents, it was decided not to adhere
rigidly to his suggested cutting points.

0f the 22k boys who were contacted, 177 completed
the interest inventory as directed. There were A3 students

who did not return their answer sheet, and h of the returned

sheets were not scorable. Out of the group of 177 boys, 159
(89.8 per cent) obtained verification scores above MA. The
next step was to score the answer sheets using the occupa-
tional keys.”

Two conventions were used in trying to match the re-
spondents' tentative vocational choice response with one of
the fifty keys available for the KPR-O. First, if no key
were available for a respondent's first response and he re-

ported other choices, one of the other choices was scored.

 

*See pages 8-9 for an explanation of this term.

51
However, this was done only if the alternate choice could be
classed with the first choice using the system worked out by
Roe (19Sh) and Mosier, Dublin, and Shelsky (1956). Second,
if there were a question concerning matchability, e.g., a
key for chemists with a choice for chemistry laboratory-
assistant, it was referred to an authority for a decision.*
There were only eight such cases.

It was possible to score 99, or only 55.3 per cent,
of the 16k tentative vocational choices, using the method
just described. The percentage of the respondents' scorable
occupational choices was computed for each of the fifty-
eight types of occupations listed in Table 2. The percent-
ages are shown in Column 3 of the table.

Non-scorability of Tentative
Vocational Choices

The large proportion (hh.7 per cent) of respondents
for whom the Kuder-Occupational was found unusable raises
some important questions. Is there anything about the boys
whose choice was scorable which distinguish them from the
boys whose choice was not scorable? Is there anything dif-
ferent about the kind of occupations these two groups of
boys chose? Answers to these questions would indicate some
of the consequences of using the KPH-O with high school

juniors.

 

*Prof. Henry B. McDaniels, Chairman of the Guidance
Department, School of Education, Stanford University,was
kind enough to do this.

52

In order to answer the questions, respondents with
a scorable vocational choice were contrasted with the re—
spondents with an unscorable choice. The comparison was
made in terms of the following five variables of the re-
spondents: scholastic ability, number of visits to their
counselor, race, number of information sources used in ar-
riving at a choice, and family's socio-economic status. A
comparison was also made concerning the socio-economic sta-
tus of the occupations chosen by the students.

Tentatively chosen occupation's socio-economic sta-
§g§.--The Strong Vocational Interest Blank is the most
widely used inventory incorporating occupational norms. It
was designed for use with university students, however, and
its keys are mostly for the more prestigeful occupations re-
quiring college training (Strong, 19h3, p. 553). It would
appear that any vocational interest inventory to be used in
the generally mass testing and vocational guidance programs
in public high schools should have keys representative of
the entire occupational structure. In order to determine
how well the KPR-O fulfills this criterion, the boys who had
a "keyed" choice were compared with the boys who did not
have a "keyed" choice. The two groups of students were con-
trasted on the basis of their chosen occupation's socio-
economic status.

The occupations chosen by the boys were classified
according to Edwards' and Wilson's (1961) system of occupa-

tional categories. They used ten categories ranging from

53

"executives" to "manual workers".* The ranking was based
upon the prestige which society attributes to occupations
and upon the ability and training which members of the occu-
pations are expected to have.

The following two conventions were used in classify-
ing the students' occupational choice (i.e., their response
to Item b in the questionnaire) according to the prestige
level of their expected vocation: (1) Unless a boy's re-
sponse indicated a specific occupation (e.g., C.P.A.), his
answer was classified according to the level at which one
usually enters the occupational field chosen (e.g., account-
ant). (2) The second, third, etc. responses were used to
help classify some of the students' first response. It was
possible to categorize 98.2 per cent of the 16h occupational
choices made by the students.

The responses of one hundred and thirty-four boys
were cross-tabulated according to whether or not each boy's
tentative occupational choice was scorable using the KPH-0
and according to their choices' level of prestige. The re-
sults are shown in Table 3. Of the total group of 13h boys
included in this analysis, 5h chose professional and execu-
tive vocations, and a key was available for 92.6 per cent of
the 5k boys' chosen vocation. On the other hand, 60 boys

chose lower and upper white-collar vocations,** and a key

 

*See Appendix D.

**See occupational categories 3 and h, Appendix D,
for examples of such.white collar jobs.

51+
existed for only h3.3 per cent of the 60 students' expected

line of work.

TABLE 3.--Percentage of chosen occupations classified by
scorability and socio-economic status

 

 

Unscorable Scorable

 

 

Father's Occupation (N= (+7) (N=87)
Unskilled and semi-skilled . . . . h.3 1.1
Skilled . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 10.%
Lower white-collar . . . . . . . . 21.3 12.
Upper white-collar . . . . . . 51.0 17.3
Small business--self—employed . . h.3 1.1
Merchants--self-employed . . . . . 0.0 0.0
Farmers, ranchers--self-employed . 0.0 0.0
Professionals-~salaried . . . . . 6.h 26.5
Professionals--self—employed . . . 2.1 28.7
Executive 0 o o o o o o o o o o o 000 203

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

=- .h90, p < .05 (two-tailed test)

The null hypothesis that the "keyed" group and the
"non-keyed" group were drawn from the same population was
tested using the Smirnov two-sample test for large samples
(Blalock, 1960, pp. 203-206). As pointed out earlier,*
these occupational data are ordinal; therefore, the use of
the non-parametric Smirnov test is not only appropriate but
desired for its robustness. A two-tailed test was used.

When the two distributions of percentages which form the

 

*See page 38.

55

columns in Table 3 were converted to cumulative distribu-
tions of proportions, the maximum difference between them
(i.e., D) equaled .h90. This is greater than the .2h6 asso-
ciated with the .05 level of confidence, and the null hy-
pothesis was rejected.

The findings just reported indicate that anyone who
expects to enter certain white collar occupations is much
less likely to find that his tentative choice can be evalu-
ated in terms of the KPH-O norms than is the person who
plans to embark upon a professional or executive career.

The new form of the Kuder appears to suffer from the
same kind of limitation which has, in part, restricted the
Strong Vocational Interest Blank from general use in high
schools, namely, the Kuder's limited number of keys for all
but the traditional professional occupations. This is a
serious limitation in view of the burgeoning of certain
white collar occupational groups which has occurred during
the last generation (Kahl, 1957). In a word, the KPR-O can-
not be used with a high prOportion of boys who intend to
enter particular lower or upper white-collar positions to
evaluate their choice even though the number of such posi-
tions has been rapidly expanding.

Family's socio-economic status.--It is possible that
Kuder's selection of occupations to key not only works to
the disadvantage of students selecting certain vocations but
also operates against students from the low and middle

socio-economic strata. This proposition was tested by

56
comparing the keyed group with the non-keyed group in terms
of the vocation of each respondent's father. The informa-
tion about the fathers' occupation was obtained primarily
from a questionnaire which Edwards and Wilson (1961, Appen-
dix B, p. Ah) sent to the boys' parents in 1959. The ques-
tionnaire data were supplemented by other information col-
lected directly from the students themselves and from their
school records. On the basis of all these facts, Edwards
and Wilson classified the students according to the system
of occupational categories described earlier.

The responses from the keyed and non-keyed groups
were distributed over the ten occupational categories, and
the data were treated in much the same way as in the previ-
ous analysis. When the null hypothesis that the two sub-
samples were drawn from the same population was tested using
the Smirnov test, D was found to equal .092. This was less
than the .2h8 needed to reject the hypothesis at the .05
level. Therefore, there appears to be no bias, in terms of
the boys' socio-economic status, resulting from the sampling
of occupations keyed for use with the KPR-O.

Visits to counselor and sources of vocational infor-

 

mation.--Do the boys in the non-keyed group need to have
their occupational choice evaluated with the help of an in-
terest inventory more than do boys in the keyed sample?
This is a difficult question to answer because it is not
easy to measure what is referred to above as "need". How-

ever, it is reasonable to assume that students who make the

57
fewest visits to their counselor and who report using the
fewest number of sources of information regarding their
chosen occupation would have the greatest need for help in
making a realistic vocational choice.

Item c on the questionnaire* is a forced-choice item
designed to elicit both the nature of the sources and the
number of sources from which the respondent got information
about his expected line of work. Item f reads as follows:
"Since the beginning of school this year, how many times
have you talked with your counselor either about a future
line of work or about school matters related to a future vo-
cation for yourself?" The boys' responses to Items c and f
were analyzed in the same manner as the data related to oc-
cupational prestige. The sample with scorable occupational
choices did not differ from the sample with unscorable
choices in terms of either sources of information or coun-
selor visits.

Scholastic ability.--Carter (l9hh) and Nicholas

 

(1963) asserted that bright students make more appropriate
occupational choices than do average students. If this were
true, it appears that boys who are average and below average
in terms of academic ability would need more vocational
guidance than boys whose academic aptitude is above average.
Because vocational interest inventories are an important

tool of the vocational counselor, it would be worthwhile to

 

*See Appendix A, pages 116-17.

58
know if the unscorable group differed from the scorable
in terms of scholastic aptitude.

The School and College Ability Test, Level 2, was
used, here and elsewhere in the study, as a measure of scho-
lastic ability. The SCAT's composite, converted score was
employed as a measure of both verbal and quantitative apti-
tudes. The mean SCAT scores for the non-keyed group and
the keyed group were 293.780 and 299.h76, respectively.

Student's t was used to test the reliability of the
difference between the two means. This particular test was
used because of its great power or robustness. Its use was
based upon the assumption that the scores were drawn from
populations in which the measures are normally distributed
and that the SCAT constitutes an interval scale. Because of
the difficulty of demonstrating the validity of the first
assumption, the .01 level of confidence, rather than the .05
level, was adopted.

Under the null hypothesis and when direction is not
predicted, the 3 value corresponding to a probability of .01
is greater than 2.576. The observed 3 equals .235, and the
null hypothesis was accepted. It appears that the two sam-
ples come from populations which do not differ in terms of
scholastic ability.

Eggg.--The data were also analyzed in order to de-
termine whether Kuder's sampling of occupations to be keyed
for the KPH-0 works to the disadvantage of any racial group.

The respondents' race was determined by asking each boy's

S9

counselor whether the boy were either a Caucasian, Negro, or
Oriental. The counselors' one hundred and forty-three re-
sponses were cross-tabulated according to the scorability of
each boy's occupational choice and according to his race.
The following null hypothesis was tested using chi square:
there is no difference between the keyed group and the non-
keyed group in the number of their members who are Negroes,
Orientals, or Caucasians. The appropriate value of chi
square associated with a probability of .05 is 5.991; where-
as, the observed chi-square value is only 3.860. The null
hypothesis was accepted, and it was concluded that the
limited applicability of the KPH-0 keys does not necessarily
work to the disadvantage of any of the racial groups stud-
ied. This concludes the description of how the keyed and
non-keyed samples were compared and what was found as a re-
sult.

Summary.--In order to determine some of the conse-
quences of Kuder's selection of occupations to be keyed, a
group of boys whose vocational choices are unscorable using
the KPR-O was compared to another group whose choice was
scorable. The respondents in the two groups were contrasted
in terms of the socio-economic status of their chosen occu-
pation, their socio-economic status, their scholastic abil-
ity, their need for vocational counseling, and race. These
two groups were found to differ only with regard to the
socio-economic status of their members' chosen occupation.

It is primarily those youth who expect to enter white collar

In

I)

l'

(D

(J

J

60
occupations* who are most apt to find their choice cannot be
evaluated using the KPH-0. It so happens that it is pre-
cisely this occupational stratum which has enjoyed the most
expansion in recent decades. The findings with regard to
the other four variables studied suggest, however, that the
effects of Kuder's sampling of occupations are less than
what one might expect. Having scored the students' re-
sponses to the KPR-O, the next step was to obtain a measure
of how well each boy's occupational choice agreed with.hh3
vocational interests.

Tentative Occgpational Choice-Vocational
Choice Congruency

 

The methods used in this investigation to measure a
person's tentative occupational choice-vocational interests
congruency requires the following information: (1) the oc-
cupation which the person expects to enter, and (2) the ex-
tent to which his interests are like the interests of suc-
cessful, satisfied members of the occupation he plans to
enter. Once these data were collected for as many of the
respondents as possible, the data were used to measure the
dependent variable with which this investigation is concern-
ed.

Measurement.--The respondents' raw score on the key
corresponding to their chosen occupation was converted to a

Differential Ratio, which was used to classify the students

 

*See occupational categories 3 and h, Appendix D,
for examples of such white collar jobs.

61
into either the congruent sub-sample or the incongruent sub-
_sample. Boys in the congruent group have a tentative occu-
pational choice which is probably congruent with their in-
ventoried vocational interests, and boys in the incongruent
group have an occupational choice which is likely to be in-
congruent with their interests.

According to Kuder (1961), the Differential Ratio
for a raw score on an occupational key“ indicates the rela-
tive proportion of two groups obtaining the same raw score
on the inventory. The two groups are a sample of men-in-
general and a sample of men in the occupation upon which the
key was constructed.

If a respondent, for instance, were to obtain a raw
score of to on the key for physicians, this would be con-
verted to a Differential Ratio of +10. A +10 Differential
Ratio means that the number of doctors in the occupational
norm group who obtained a raw score of to was ten times
greater than the number of individuals in the men-in-general
group who received the same score. Both groups, however,
must be the same size. A Differential Ratio of -10 means
that ten times the number of persons in the men-in-general
norm sample than doctors in the occupational norm group re-
ceived a score of ho. An ==DR (i.e., Differential Ratio)
indicates equal proportions of the same number of members

in both groups obtained the same raw score.

 

*See pages 8-9 for an explanation of this term.

62

Of the 159 respondents with verification scores
above AA, 91 chose an occupation for which an apprOpriate
key was available. The congruent and incongruent groups
used throughout most of the subsequent analyses were formed
from this sample of 91 boys.

Results.--All respondents in the group of 91 who ob-
tained a + Differential Ratio (i.e., any DR from -+2 to +-10
and over) were classified as "congruent". Boys with a -DR
(from -2 to -10 and under) were classified as "incongruent".
There are a total of 87 cases in the congruent and incongru-
ent samples. Of this total, A6 (52.9 per cent) are congru-
ent cases, and Al (h7.1 per cent) are incongruent respond-
ents. The two groups are hereafter referred to as the
”research sub-samples".

There are four boys with IIDRs, and the boys were
not classified as having either a congruent or incongruent
tentative occupational choice. They were included in the
"combined sub-samples" (NI-91) used in the analysis which
will be reported next.

Representativeness of the sub-samples.--It is pos-
sible that the combined congruent and incongruent sub-
samples (N-=9l, including A cases with =IDRs) is not repre-
sentative of the group of participants from which the sub-
samples were drawn (N 3181). In order to see if the com-
bined sub-samples and the group of participants were differ-
ent, the combined sub-samples were compared to the group of

ninety participants not included among the sub-samples. The

63
comparison was made in terms of the following variables:
socio-economic status, scholastic ability, race, attitudinal
traits, and socio-economic status of chosen occupation. The
variables were selected on the basis of research and theory
regarding occupational choice and vocational interests.
Each variable is operationally defined in subsequent chap-
ters dealing with tests of the research hypotheses.

The data indicating every respondent's socio-
economic status were arranged in two frequency distribu-
tions, one for the combined sub-samples and one for the
group of ninety other participants. The data for the socio-
economic status of each respondent's chosen occupation were
treated in the same fashion. The Smirnov test was employed
to determine if the difference in the two sets of cumulative
distributions were too large to assume that the groups came
from the same population. This is one of the most powerful
statistical tesUsappropriate for use with ordinal-type data
such as the above.

For the data regarding socio-economic status, the
value associated with the .05 level of confidence is .209.
The obtained D, using the Smirnov test, is equal to .159,
and the null hypothesis was accepted. The value associated
with the same level of confidence for the data on the socio-
economic status of each chosen occupation--see Table h--
is .219. The obtained D of .382 exceeds this value, and the
null hypothesis was rejected. It was concluded from these

findings that the combined sub-samples and the group of

611

TABLE h.--Percentage of boys in the combined sub-samples
and in the group of other participants classified by the
socio-economic status of chosen occupation

 

Socio-economic Combined Other Par-
Status of Chosen Sub-samples ticipants
Occupation (N=91) (N=67)

 

 

Unskilled and semi-skilled . . . . 1.1 6.0
Skilled . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 7.5
Lower white collar . . . . . . . . 13.2 23.9
Upper white collar . . . . . . . 16.5 No.3
Small business-—self-employed . . 1.1 h-S
Merchants--self-employed . . . . . 0.0 0.0
Farmers, ranchers-~self—employed . 0.0 0.0
Professionals--salaried . . . . . 25.3 10.h
Professionals--self-employed . . . 28.6 7.5
Executive . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 0.0

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100.1 100.1

 

D= .382, p < .05 (two-tailed test)

other participants differed with regard to every respond-
ent's chosen occupation's socio-economic status but not with
regard to each respondent's socio-economic status. Forty-
seven of the sixty-seven boys classed as "Other Partici-
pants" in Table u had non-scorable occupational choices.

The data in Table A for the socio-economic level of chosen
occupations are quite similar to those for the scorable and
non-scorable groups shown in Table 2. Because of the over-
lapping of the combined sub-samples and other participants
with the scorable and unscorable groups, respectively, it

was concluded that each pair of groups differs in terms of

cho

man

a FAD.

H

Neg

0r:

Set

1‘- w

t“

Etiv

65
chosen occupation's status for the same reason.

The 2 x 3 contingency table shown in Table 5 was

TABLE 5.--Percentage of boys in the combined sub-samples and
in the group of other participants classified by race

 

 

 

 

Combined Other Par-

Race Sub-samples ticipants
(N=9l) (N=90)
Negro (N= 1+1) . . . . . 15.L|, 30.0
Oriental (N= 23) . . . . . 18.7 6.7
Caucasian (N==ll7) . . . . . 65.9 63.3
Total . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

1289-1350, df=2, p < .05 (two-tailed test)

set up to determine if the boys in the combined sub-samples
differed from the other participants with regard to the rel-
ative proportion of Negro, Oriental, and Caucasian students
in the groups. With 2 degrees of freedom, the probability
of obtaining a chi square of 5.991 is .05. The value of the
chi-square statistic actually obtained was 9.h50, and the
null hypothesis was rejected. Inspection of Table.5 shows
that the percentage of Negro boys in the group of other par-
ticipants is almost double the percentage in the combined
sub-samples. The percentage of Oriental boys in the com-

bined sub-samples approaches three times the percentage for

66

the group of other participants.

After an examination of the types of occupations
boys in these two racial groups were selecting, it was ap-
parent that the boys were not expecting to enter the same
kinds of occupations. The great majority of the Negro boys
had tentatively chosen the lowest status occupations, where-
as, most of the Oriental boys had selected professional vo-
cations. The respondents in the combined sub-samples were
found to differ from the other participants in terms of the
relative proportion of Negroes and Orientals comprising the
two groups. This difference seems to be explicable in terms
of the differential occupational expectations of the two
racial groups of students.

The mean scholastic ability scores for each of the
two groups were computed, and the reliability of their dif-
ferences was determined using the £_test. The mean SCAT
score for the boys in the combined groups and the other par-
ticipants are 298.2h3 and 293.012, respectively. The value
which was derived from the application of the t test is
1.901. The 2 corresponding to the .01 level of confidence
is 2.576, with a two-tailed test and more than 120 degrees
of freedom. The null hypothesis that the two groups were
drawn from populations with equal mean SCAT scores was ac-
cepted.

The reliability of the difference between the mean
prudency score for the students in the combined sub-samples

and the other participants was also determined by the use of

67

Student's t. The means were h3.h71 and h5.028, respec-
tively. The obtained.t for their difference equals -l.267,
and this is less than the 2.576 associated with a proba-
bility of .01 when the test is two-tailed and degrees of
freedom are more than 120. This finding led to the accept-
ance of the null hypothesis that the two samples of P-I
scale scores were both drawn from the same pOpulation of
such scores. The findings for scholastic aptitude and for
attitudinal traits (i.e., prudency-immediateness) show that
the combined sub-samples and the group of other participants
probably do not differ with regard to these two variables.

Because the group of ninety-one boys from which the
congruent and incongruent sub-samples were drawn comprised
less than one half of the youth who participated in this
study, it was decided to compare this group of ninety-one
boys with the collection of ninety boys who completed the
interests inventory and questionnaire but were not included
in the research.sample. The two groups of participants were
contrasted in terms of their members' socio-economic status,
scholastic ability, race, attitudinal traits, and socio-
economic status of chosen occupation. It was concluded that
the two groups probably differed only with regard to race
and status of tentatively chosen occupation. This means
that any generalizations which may be made from the research
sample to the pOpulation from which it has presumably been
drawn should be qualified in terms of the following facts:

(1) Oriental participants were over-represented in the

68

sample. (2) Negro boys and others who tentatively chose the

lowest-status jobs were under-represented in the sample.

References

 

Blalock, Hubert M., Jr. Social Statistics. New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Co., 1960.

Carter, Harold D. "The Development of Interest in Voca-
tions," Adolescence. Forty-third Yearbook of the
National Society for the Study of Education, Part I.
Cgécago: University of Chicago Press, l9hh, pp.

2 -70

Dresden, Katharine W. "Vocational Choices of Secondary
Pu 118," Occupations, XVII (November, 19h8), 10h-
10 .

 

 

Edwards, T. Bentley and Wilson, Alan B. A Study of Some
Social and Psychological Factors Influencinngduca-
tional Achievement. A Final Report to the United
States Office of Education, Department of Health,
Education and Welfare. Prepared by the Authors Pur-
suant to OE Contract No. SAE 7787. Berkeley, Calif.:
Department of Education, University of California,
June, 1961. (Mimeographed.)

 

Holloway, Robert B., and Berreman, Joel V. "The Educational
and Occupational Aspirations and Plans of Negro and
White Male Elementary School Students," Pacific
Sociological Review, II (Fall, 1959), 56160.

 

Kahl, Joseph.A. The American Class Structure. New York:
Rinehart, 1997.

 

Kuder, G. Frederic. Manual for the Kuder Preference Record-
Occupational, Form D. Eth ed. Chicago: Science Re-
search Associates, 1961.

 

Mosier, Helen P., Dublin, William, and Shelsky, Irving, M.
"A Proposed Modification of the Roe Occupational
Classification," Journal of Counseling Psychology,
III (Spring, 19567, 27-31.

Nicholas, Phoebe Overstreet. "Vocational Development," lg
Arthur T. Jerseld, The Psychology of Adolescence.
New York: Macmillan Co., 1963. Chapter XVII.

 

Roe, Anne. "A New Classification of Occupations," Journal of
Counseling Psychology, I (Winter, 195h), 215-20.

 

69

Strong, Edward K., Jr. Vocational Interests of Men and
Women. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

19H3.

 

CHAPTER V

KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND OF OCCUPATIONS

Self-estimations of Scholastic Ability
and of Vocational Interests

 

Both theory and research concerning occupational
choice and vocational interests indicate that there is a
positive relationship between knowledge of self and realism
of vocational choice, as the latter is measured in this
study. The following analysis focuses upon only two facets
of self-knowledge, namely, self-estimations of vocational
interests and of scholastic ability. It is designed to
test the hypothesis that the respondents who are high on
occupational choice-interests congruency (i.e., realism of
vocational choice) are also high on both of the above self-
knovledge dimensions. Conversely, boys whose occupational
choice-interests congruency is low will also be low on
self-knowledge.

Measurement.--Item 9 in the questionnaire asked the

 

respondents to rate, on a four-point scale, how their inter-
ests compare with the interests of men in their chosen occu-
pation. The students were classified according to their
Differential Ratio on the KPR—O, using the following four

intervals: -- to - 7, - 6 to - 2,+ 2 to+6, and+7 to++.

70

71
If a boy whose DR put him in the highest interval (i.e., + 7
to ++-) also rated himself as having interests "very much
the same" as men in his chosen occupation; his estimate
would be rated "accurate". Had he estimated his interests
as being "somewhat the same," the boy's estimate would be
rated "rather accurate". The estimates which diverged most
from inventoried interests were rated "inaccurate".

The last item on the questionnaire was designed to
elicit the boys' estimation of their scholastic ability in
relation to their peers, again on a four-point scale. The
respondents' SCAT scores were used as a measure of scholas-
tic ability. The 86 students in the congruent and incon-
gruent groups who took the SCAT were grouped according to
the combined groups' quartile scores. The respondents' es-
timates of their abilities were rated in the same way as
their interests (e.g., if a boy in the top quartile of SCAT
scores were to place himself at the lowest level of ability,
his estimate would be rated "inaccurate").

Realism of vocational choice was measured in terms
of the congruency between occupational choice and inven-
toried interests. The congruent sub-sample is high on re-
alism and the incongruent sub-sample is low on realism.

The manner in which these two groups were formed was ex-
plained on pages 60-62.

Analysis of the data.--The analysis used to test

most of the research hypotheses is basically the same. The

congruent group and the incongruent group were compared in

72
terms of a variable specified in each hypothesis. This was
done by setting up several 2 x r tables, and "r" was deter-
mined by the number of levels or categories characterizing
the variable. The "2," of course, refers to the congruent
and the incongruent groups. In effect, these research sub-
samples represent two levels of congruency between occupa-
tional choice and interests. In testing the hypothesis
mentioned above, the two sub-samples were contrasted with
respect to both self-estimations of scholastic ability and
of vocational interests.

The Smirnov test was used in testing the hypothesis
stated at the beginning of this chapter. The ordinal char-
acter of the data was utilized to employ this powerful non-
parametric test. The null hypothesis involved is as fol-
lows: the congruent sub-sample and the incongruent sub-
sample were drawn from populations having estimations of
academic ability and vocational interest ratings which are
stochastically equal.

Findings and their interpretation.--Table 6 indi-
cates that almost all the ratings of the respondents' esti-
mates of their vocational interests ranged between "accu-
rate" and "rather inaccurate". A higher proportion (39.1
per cent) of the congruent group than of the incongruent
group (22.0 per cent) received ratings of "accurate". Con-
versely, the proportion (8.7 per cent) of the congruent
group with the "rather inaccurate" rating was considerably

lower than the proportion (h3.9 per cent) of the incongruent

73
group with the same rating. The chi-square statistic with
two degrees of freedom may be used with the Smirnov test to
determine the statistical significance of an observed value
of D, provided samples are large and the test is one-tailed
(Blalock, 1960, p. 20h). In this case chi square was found
to equal lh.0h7, which is considerably more than the 5.991
associated with the .05 level of confidence. Therefore,
the null hypothesis, as it pertains to vocational interests,
was rejected.
TABLE 6.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-

tional choice-interests congruency and knowledge of their
vocational interests

 

 

 

m ===
Incongruent Congruent
Accurate . . . . . . . . . . 22.0 39.1
Rather accurate . . . . . . 26.8 50.0
Rather inaccurate . . . . . h3.9 8.7
Inaccurate . . . . . . . . . 7.3 2.2
Total . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

")6... 11min, are 2, p < .05 (one-tailed test)

Table 7 indicates that there is little difference
between the research sub-samples in terms of self-estima-

tions of scholastic aptitude. There were 29.3 per cent of

7h
the incongruent group who obtained the "accurate" rating
compared to 37.8 per cent of the congruent group who re-
ceived the same rating. The figures for the "rather inac-
curate" rating are 12.2 per cent and 11.1 per cent, respec-
tively. The Smirnov test was applied to the data in Table
7 in the same manner as it was used with the data in Table
6. In the case of the former the null hypothesis is as
follows: The congruent group and the incongruent group
arose from populations with the same ratings for estimating
scholastic ability. The value for the chi-square statistic
obtained is only .601, which is a good deal short of the
5.991 associated with a probability of .05. In this in-
stance, the null hypothesis was accepted.
TABLE 7.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-

tional choice-interests congruency and knowledge of their
scholastic ability

 

—
1

 

 

Incongruent Congruent
Estimates (N= 1+1) (N= ’45)
Accurate . . . . . . . . . . 29.3 37.8
Rather accurate . . . . . . 58.5 51.1
Rather inaccurate . . . . . 12.2 11.1
Inaccurate . . . . . . . . . 0.0 0.0
TOtal e e e e o e e e e 0 10000 10000

 

38: .601, or: 2, p > .05 (one-tailed test)

75

Conclusions and discussion.--It is possible to make
two conclusions on the basis of the foregoing analysis, one
conclusion pertaining to interests and the other conclusion
concerning scholastic ability. First, boys who make a vo-
cational choice which is consistent with their interests
know more about their interests in relation to their expect-
ed vocation than do boys who make an inconsistent choice.
This generalization gives substantial support to Ginzberg's
notion that realism of occupational choice is the result of
a youth's bringing what he knows about his interests, val-
ues, and capabilities into line with what he knows about
the occupational world. Second, boys who are high on voca-
tional choice-interests congruency do not differ from boys
low on vocational choice-interests congruency, in terms of
knowledge of scholastic ability with regard to their peers.
This conclusion does little more than point up the need for
an instrument which will assess the congruency between a
boy's scholastic ability and the scholastic ability of suc-
cessful members of the occupation which the boy has tenta-
tively selected. With such an instrument, it would be pos-
sible to study the relationship between occupational
choice-interests congruency and occupational choice-scho-
lastic aptitude congruency. Ginzberg's theory predicts a
high correlation between the two variables but the second
conclusion stated above implies that the two variables are

more independent than theory would have us believe.

7o
Scholastic Ability

Studies by Ginzberg gt_gl. (1951), Reisner (1956),
Ryan (1953), Wrenn (1935), and Lockwood (1958) appear to in-
dicate that cognition plays a very important part in occupa-
tional choice. However, the investigations have serious
methodological flaws, employed college students for the most
part, and usually dealt with only the more complex occupa-
tions which such students typically expect to enter. There-
fore it is not clear how important cognition is in the
making of a tentative occupational choice among high school
boys. It is reasonable to assume that if cognition is very
important, the congruent group in this study would be
brighter than the incongruent group. The following analysis
was made in order to determine if the two groups did differ
in scholastic ability.

Analysis.--The mean SCAT score was computed for the
congruent and the incongruent groups, and the reliability of
their difference was estimated using the t_test. The dis-
tribution of scores in each of the sub-samples did not ap-
pear to depart from normality to any marked degree. However
in the light of the difficulty of actually demonstrating
that certain assumptions associated with the t test were
fulfilled, the level of confidence was set at .01 rather
than .05.

Results and their interpretation.--The mean SCAT
scores for the congruent and the incongruent group are

300.h56 and 298.500, respectively. The obtained 2 for this

77
difference has the value .085, and this falls short of the
<2.66o > 2.617 associated with a probability of .01
(dfti8h). The null hypothesis that the two samples were
drawn from pOpulations having the same mean SCAT scores was
accepted.

Conclusion and discussion.--The amount of occupa-
tional knowledge, as indicated by a scholastic aptitude
test, does not seem to play as significant a part in high
school boys' selection of an appropriate vocation as theory
would lead one to believe.

One expects, however, that scholastic ability would
have been found more important in the making of tentative
occupational choices if the following had been true: (1)
All the boys selected vocations requiring complex role be-
havior. (2) The boys had relied exclusively upon sources
of information requiring the ability to manipulate symbols.
The findings reported in other sections of this report show
that this was not true of the students studied. This points
up the difficulty of making generalizations from.research
concerning high school students' occupational choice because
of the great variance in the types of occupations which
these students choose.

Importancegf‘Various Sources
g£_;nformation

Ginzberg and his associates, as well as others who
have studied the phenomenon, agree that knowledge of occupa-

tions plays a part in occupational choice. This position

an:
let

ex;

.
n n
u\

tl:

30'.

ent

78
implies that such information must be accurate, objective,
and up-to-date if it is to promote realism of choice. Know-
ledge which is inaccurate, biased, and out-of—date can be
expected to have the Opposite effect.

Wallace's (1949) data suggest that college students
who report school or teachers, friends, books and litera-
ture, and work experience as being of much importance as a
source of information make more appropriate choices than
students who rate the same sources less highly. The follow-
ing analysis was made to determine if these relationships
hold with regard to high school boys.

Measurement.--On questionnaire Item d, the respond-
ents were asked to check the one forced-choice alternative
which they felt was their main source of knowledge concern-
ing their chosen vocation. These ten forced-choice re-
sponses, as well as one open-ended alternative, are included
in Item c of the questionnaire.* The results are shown in
Table 8.

The last two types of information sources listed in
the table came from the respondents' answers to the open-
ended alternative. "Leisure” refers to the hobbies and
other leisure-time activities through which the boys said
they had learned about certain vocation-related activities.
"Products" denotes observing, using,and/or examining the

products of a particular occupational group.

 

*See Appendix A, page 117.

79

TABLE 8.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-
tional choice-interests congruency and most important
source of information

 

 

[I

Difference Be-
tween Propor-

 

 

Source Incon- Con- tions Express-
gruent gruent ed as Percent- Total
(N=lll) (N=-1+6) ages (N= 87)
Family . . . . . 3h.2 17-h 16.8 25.3
Books, magazines 21.9 23.2 -2.0* 23.0
SChOOl e e e o e (+09 190 “lb-07 1206
Experience . . . 7.3 8.7 -l.% 8.0
Observation . . h.9 8.7 -3. 6.9
TeaChers e e o e 7e %el4 209 302
Friends . . . . 2. .5 -h.1 .
Movies, TV . . . 9. 0.0 9.8 u.6
Relatives o e 0 20,4. “.03 -109 305
Leisure . . . . 0.0 u.3 -h.3 2.3
Products . . . . 2.8 2.2 0.2 2.3
Counselors . . . 2.h 0.0 th 1.1
TOtal . o o o 99.9 100.0 99.9

 

*Significant below the .05 level when corrected,

(one-tailed test)

Analysis.-—The proportion of boys who checked one of

the information sources listed in Item d was computed for

the congruent sub-sample and the incongruent sub-sample.

Only three differences between proportions were tested to

determine the likelihood that the differences were due to

chance. The difference between proportions test for two in-

dependent samples was used for this purpose, and it was ap-

plied to the proportion of respondents in each research

8O
sub-sample who reported either ”family" (two-tailed test),
"school", or "books and magazines" (one-tailed test) as
their most important information source. It would not have
been wise to apply the test to any of the other nine differ-
ences between proportions because the frequencies involved
are too small.

Results and their interpretation.--It may be seen
from Table 8 that the differences between proportions for
the incongruent and congruent groups are in the predicted
direction for the following sources: ”friends," "books and
magazines," ”school," and "experience". This was not true
with regard to "teachers," however. The difference between
proportions for "school" was the only one which proved to be
statistically significant. The obtained 5 for this differ-
ence equals 1.735, when corrected for continuity. This is
slightly more than the value of 1.6h5 corresponding to the
.05 level of confidence (one-tailed test).

The proportion of respondents checking "family" and
"movies, TV" was higher among the incongruent group than
among the congruent group. The difference between propor-
tions for "family" is not statistically significant (two-
tailed test), and the difference for "movies, TV" was not
tested because of the extremely small number of cases in-
volved. Almost all the differences in proportions shown in
TableEBare based upon very small frequencies, and the reader
is cautioned against placing too much weight upon the reli-
ability of the differences shown in Table 8.

81

The twelve information sources have been ranked ac-
cording to the number of respondents in the combined sub-
samples who checked each source. "Family" and "books, mag-
azines" were, by far, the sources most often checked. It is
rather surprising that only 1.1 per cent of the boys indi-
cated that counselors were their main source of information.

Conclusions and discussion.--It is possible to con-
clude that more male high school students who have made a
realistic tentative occupational choice feel that the school
was their most important source of vocational information
than do students who have not made a realistic choice.

It is quite possible that boys' use of family,
movies, and TV as their main source of information is nega-
tively associated with realism of choice. This is signifi-
cant because the family is the most popular means of obtain-
ing facts concerning possible lines of work; therefore, the

finding deserves more study.

Number ofignformation Sources and
9f Counselor Visits

According to Ginzberg's theory, adolescents become
more realistic in their occupational choices as they come to
know more about the world of work. High school counselors
are supposed to provide their counselees with information
about various occupations when they ask for it. Among the
typical socialization agents for the young in our society,
the school counselor is the only person specially trained to

perform.this function. One would suspect, therefore, that

82
boys who make more than the average number of visits to
their counselor for vocational guidance would make a more
realistic tentative occupational choice than would boys who
make less than the usual number of visits. There is some
evidence which indicates that this is the case among college
students at least.

Wallace (19h9) compared his two sub-samples of col-
1ege students in terms of the number of times they reported
visiting a counselor at the university. One group was high
on vocational choice-interests congruency, and the other
group was low on congruency. Wallace found that the high
congruency group made more counselor visits than the other
group. This supports the above theory but it is not known
whether the same results would be obtained with students of
high school age.

The findings reported in the preceding section sug-
gest that certain sources of information about vocations aid
the making of a realistic vocational choice more than do
others. These findings were suggested by previous research,
but there does not appear to be any evidence regarding the
effect of the number of sources of occupational knowledge
employed during the process of arriving at a tentative occu-
pational choice. It may be inferred from.Ginzberg's theory
that the number of information sources employed in this man-
ner is positively associated with realism of occupational
choice, as it is measured in this study.

The following hypothesis was formulated in order to

83
test the above proposition:
Members of the congruent group make more visits to
their school counselor and use more sources of infor-
mation when making a decision about a vocation than
do the members of the incongruent group.

Measurement.--Item f of the questionnaire was used
to assess the number of counselor visits the respondents had
made. The item is reproduced as follows:

Since the beginning of school this year, how many
times have you talked with your counselor either about
a future line of work or about school matters related
to a future vocation for yourself?

Item 0* asked the respondents to select from a list
of ten possible information sources the ones they had used
in making their tentative occupational choice. Only four re-
spondents took advantage of the Open-ended part of this item
to report their use of a source not included in the list.
The item itself was adapted from a question in Wallace's
(19h9) questionnaire. The number of sources attributed to
each respondent was the sum of the sources be either checked
or wrote in himself.

Analysis.--The data for sources of information and
for counselor visits were both analyzed in the same manner.
The number of sources reported by the boys ranged from one
to nine. These data were cross-tabulated with occupational
choice-interests congruency. The number of visits which the

respondents made to see their counselor ranged from none to

eight, and the responses were also cross-tabulated with

 

*See Appendix A, pages 116-17.

81;
occupational choice-interests congruency.

The null hypothesis that there is no difference be-
tween the congruent and the incongruent groups in terms of
the number of visits their members make to see their counse-
lor and in the number of sources of information they use was
tested using the Smirnov test. This powerful statistical
tool may be used with the ordinal-type data which were ana-
lyzed. In both instances one-tailed tests were utilized,
and the .05 level of confidence was adhered to.

Finding; and their interpretation.--The number of
information sources reported by the respondents clustered
between two and five with a sharp dropping off after five.
This is shown in Table 9. The observed value for 'X?
equals 7.856, which is greater than the 5.991 corresponding
to a probability of .05 (df== 2). The part of the null hy-
pothesis pertaining to information sources was rejected.

There is a striking similarity between the percent-
ages for counselor visits among each of the research sub-
samples, as the percentages appear in Table 10. In this
case 'X? is only 1.355 (df== 2), which is not statistically
significant.

Conclusions and discussion.--The above results sug-
gest that boys who utilize more than one or two information
sources in arriving at a vocational choice are more likely
to make a realistic choice than boys who do not use as many
sources. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that

the more sources they use the more realistic their choice

I11

TAE
tic

\OmNOU‘l-‘TWNH

m

the

on 1
Choi
them
'0pl

”Uni

85
will be.
TABLE 9.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-

tional choice-interests congruency and number of informa-
tion sources

 

 

 

Number of Sources In2§2g£§ent C?§EPEZ?t
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.h 0.0
2 o e e e e e o e e e e e 0 3,402 605
fi . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29.3 h3-S
O O O O O 0 O O O O O 0 O 12.1 19.6
5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.6 17.h
6 e o e e o e e e e o e e e 000 2403
g . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.u 2.2
O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O 0.0 [+03
9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.0 2.2
Total . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

12" 7.856, p (.05 (one-tailed test)

The findings also suggest that the number of visits
which boys make to confer with their counselor during their
Junior year has little or nothing to do with how appropriate
the boys' tentative choices are.

The hypothesis concerning counselor visits is based
on two assumptions. First, to make a realistic occupational
choice, boys must be able to bring what they know about
themselves into line with what they are learning about the
world in which they live. Second, by conferring with their

counselees, high school counselors help them arrive at a

86
realistic choice through promoting the above process. Be-
cause Ginzberg's data, as well as most of this study's other
results support the first assumption, this finding's failure
to support the hypothesis is probably due to a weakness in

the second assumption.

TABLE lO.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-
tional choice-interests congruency and number of counselor

 

 

 

 

visits
k
I Incon ruent Con ruent
Number of Visits (N=ghl) (118.2176)
0 O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 12.2 8.7
1 O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O 26.8 ZBOfi
2 o e o e e e o e e o e e e 2903 30.
a o o e e o o e e e e o e e 1905 1300
O o e o e e e o e e o e e 70 202
S e o e e e e e o e e e e o 20g 1009
6 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0.0 2.2
7 O o O o e e e o e e e e e 000 000
8 o o e e o e e o e o e e e 20“. “.03
TOtal o e e o e e e e e e 9909 10000

 

‘X? = 1.355, P > .05 (one-tailed test)

The individual counseling of the guidance workers
involved in this study may be ineffective in promoting ten-
tative vocational choice-interests congruency. This state-
ment could be true regardless of how effectively the coun-
selors help their clients regarding the other important ele-

ments in making an appropriate occupational choice. There

87
are at least three possible reasons why the guidance workers'
individual counseling may be ineffective in promoting occu-
pational choice-interests congruency. First, the counselors
feel that vocational interests are not an important element
in the occupational choice process. Second, the students
ignore or are unable to use the information which their
counselor gives them about their interests. Third, the data
from the Kuder Preference Record-Vocational, which is admin-
istered to the students and presumably used for counseling
purposes, is not highly correlated with the new Kuder Pref-
erence Record-Occupational used in this study.

It is quite possible, on the other hand, that the
high school counselors are very effective in promoting the
occupational choice process but in ways not measured by the
number of counselor visits boys make in their junior year.

Perhaps if younger students had been studied, the results

would have supported the hypothesis. Maybe it is the qual-
ity of the visits rather than their number which is crucial
in this regard. The results imply that the effect which
high school counselors have upon their clients' vocational
choice-interests congruency should be studied more thor-

oughly.

References

Blalock, Hubert M., Jr. Social Statistics. New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Co., 1960.

Ginzberg, Eli, et a1. Occupationaltghoice: An Approachgto a
General Theory. New York: Columbia University Press,

1951.

88

Lockwood, William V. "Realism of Vocational Preference,"
Personnel and Guidance Journal, XXXVIII (October,
1958), 98-106.

Reisner, Martin. "A Comparative Investigation of Personality
Factors Associated with Appropriate and Inappropri-
ate Levels of Vocational Aspiration." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1956. (Ab-
stracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. 17, No. 3,
1957, pp. 678-790;

Ryan, John F. X. "Study of Certain Factors Affecting Realis-
tic and Unrealistic Choice of an Occupation." Unpub-
lished Ed.D. dissertation, New York University,
1953. (Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts, Vol.
XIV, No. h, l95h, pp. 619-20.)

Wallace, Wimburn L. "The Relationship of Certain Variables
to Discrepancy Between Expressed and Inventoried
Vocational Interest." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Michigan, 19u9. (Microfilmed.)

Wrenn, C. Gilbert. "Intelligence and the Vocational Choices
of College Students," Educational Record, XVI
(April, 1935). 217-19-

CHAPTER VI

VOCATIONAL CHOICE-INTERESTS CONGRUENCY
AND PRUDENTNESS-IMMEDIATENESS

The purpose of this study is to test a number of hy-
potheses. One of the hypotheses is that boys with a tenta-
tive occupational choice which is consonant with their meas-
ured vocational interests are more prudent than boys with a
choice which is not consonant with their interests. As ex-
plained earlier,* the term prudent is used to represent the
following attitudinal traits which Ginzberg and his associ-
ates (1951) concluded were characteristic of youths who
reached the realistic period in their development: time
perspective, postponement of gratification, and compromise.
The hypothesis is also consistent with.Tetreau's (196A)
findings that open-mindedness is correlated with occupa-
tional preference-vocational interests congruency. The re-
mainder of this chapter is devoted to a description of how
the above proposition was tested.

Measurement.--Careful reading of Occupational Choice
(Ginzberg gt_gl., 1951) indicates there is a marked simi-

larity between what its authors denote by the terms time

 

*See page 30.

89

90
perspective, postponement of gratification, and compromise
and prudentness, as the latter is measured by an instrument
constructed by Edwards and Wilson (1958; 1959; 1961;
Edwards, 1960). Likewise the inflexible adherence to ex-
trinsic, immediate rewards and inability to formulate and
consistently pursue remote, long-range goals about which
Ginzberg has written appears to be synonymous with the imme-
diateness which Edwards and Wilson purport to measure with
their instrument. It was decided, therefore, to use their
scale in testing the hypothesis concerning occupational
choice-interests congruency and prudentness.

Edwards' and Wilson's prudent-immediate scale--
hereafter referred to as the P-I scale--was constructed from
twelve Likert-type items. The items were organized into
three compound items using a modified Guttman scalogram
analysis. The three-item Guttman-type scale has a reproduc-
ibility coefficient of .87 based on results from 3,750 high
school students.

The developers of the P-I scale have offered two
reasons why they feel their instrument is sufficiently reli-
able to be used for research purposes. First, after Guttman
(1950, p. 311) Edwards and Wilson assert that the tolerable
unidimensionality of their compound items is evidence that
the scale is reasonably reliable. Second, when thirteen
samples' responses to each of the twelve original items were
ranked in terms of their popularity, the coefficient of con-

cordance (W) between the rankings is .90.

91

The best evidence in support of the P-I scale's va-
lidity is that it predicts student grades in a manner one
would expect from the nature of the variable the scale was
designed to measure. Edwards and Wilson (1961, Appendix C,
p. 21) present evidence that there is a positive, linear re-
lationship between prudency and grades in academic subjects
and a negative association between immediateness and grades.
While the Guttman-type P-I scale was well suited for the use
to which it was put by Edwards and Wilson, the instrument is
not appropriate for the kind of analysis necessary for test-
ing the above hypothesis.

This part of the study was designed on the assump-
tion that the relevant hypothesis could best be tested by
employing one of the most powerful available statistical
tools. The robust difference-of-means parametric tests are
not appropriate for analyzing scores from the Guttman-type
P-I scale because the scores cannot exceed a range of O to
3. For this reason, the Guttman-type P-I scale was modified
for use in this study.

In order to increase the number of items in the P-I
instrument, the original twelve Likert-type items were used
to make up the modified scale. The‘weights given to some of
the items in the Guttman scale were re-assigned so that the
largest weights always represented the greatest degree of
prudentness. ”I should prefer the live theater to movies if
they were the same price," is one of the twelve items. A

response which indicates strong agreement with this

92
statement was assigned a weight of six; whereas, a response
representing strong disagreement received a weight of one.
All the items were re-scored using the method just de-
scribed, and the new scores were analyzed to test the hy-
pothesis.

Data analysis.--The analysis consisted of comparing

 

the mean P-I score for the congruent sub-sample with the
mean score for the incongruent sub-sample. It was predicted
that the congruent group would have the higher mean score so
a one-tailed test was employed. In order to minimize the
likelihood of committing a Type II error, the powerful t
test was used to estimate the reliability of the difference

between the two means. Because of the difficulty of empir-

ically demonstrating the validity of the assumptions under-
lying the 3 test, the rigorous .01 level of significance was
set for the analysis.

Results.--The mean prudentness scores for the con-
gruent and the incongruent group are h5.6lh and h1.395, re-
spectively, and they are in the predicted direction. The
value for 3 was found to be 2.532, (80 degrees of freedom),
which is greater than the 2.39 associated with only 60 de-
grees of freedom. This was a one-tailed test with the level
of significance set at the .01 level of confidence. The
null hypothesis that the two sub-samples were drawn from the
same population was rejected.

Conclusions.--The results just reported support the

conclusion that boys with a tentative occupational choice

93

which is consonant with their measured vocational interests
are more prudent than boys with a choice which is not con-
gruent. To the degree that prudentness, as measured in this
study, is the same as the cluster of concepts which Ginzberg
calls time perspective, postponement of gratification, and
compromise; the latter's theory of occupational choice is
supported.

It is possible that the observed difference in the
two sub—samples with regard to prudentness is due more to
intelligence than it is to occupational choice-interests
congruency. This possibility stems from the fact that the
two sub-samples probably differ in ways other than congru-
ency, and any observed differences in their statistics could
be due to variables other than congruency. It was reported
earlier that more than one writer on the subject of realism
of vocational choice contend that scholastic ability is pos-
itively related to appropriateness of choice; therefore, the
two sub-samples were compared in terms of this variable.

The mean School and College Ability Test scores for the con-
gruent and incongruent groups were compared in the same man-
ner as those for the P-I scale scores just described. The
observed difference of means is only 1.956, and the obtained
t.for this difference equals .085 with BA degrees of free-
dom. The 2 associated with this many degrees of freedom is
between 2.660 and 2.617 for a two-tailed test and a proba-
bility of .01. The null hypothesis that there is no differ-

ence between the sub-samples with regard to scholastic

91+

aptitude was retained. It appears that the superiority of
the congruent group's members with regard to realism of vo-
cational choice is more apt to be due to their prudentness

than to any superiority in scholastic ability.

References

 

Edwards, T. Bentley. Attitudes of High School Students as
Related to Success in School. A Final Report to the
United States Office of Education, Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare. Prepared by the
Author Pursuant to OR Contract No. SAE 71MB.
Berkeley, Calif.: Department of Education, Univer-
sity of California, July 31, 1958 Reprinted Nov.
1, 1960 . (Mimeographed.)

,and Wilson, Alan B. "Attitudes Toward the Study of

School Subjects," Educational Theory, VIII (October,
1958), 275-83 and 285.

. "The Development of Scales of Attitudinal Dimen-
sions," Journal of Experimental Education, XXVIII
(September, 1959): 3-36.

. A Study of Some Social and Psychological Factors
Influencing_Educational Achievement. A Final Report
to the United States Office of Education, Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare. Prepared by the
Authors Pursuant to OE Contract No. SAE 7787.
Berkeley, Calif.: Department of Education, Univer-
sity of California, June, 1961. (Mimeographed.)

Ginzberg, Eli, et a1. Occupational Choice: An A roach to a
General Theo . New York: Columbia University Press,
1951.

Guttman, Louis. "Problems of Reliability," 13 Samuel
Stouffer et a1. Measurement and Prediction ("Studies
in Social Psychology in World War II," [E vols.:
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950]),
IV, 305’110

 

Tetreau, Bernard P. "Influence of Dogmatism on Accuracy of
Self-knowledge and Realism of Vocational Prefer-
ence." Unpublished Ed.D. dissertation, Teachers
College, Columbia University, l96h.

CHAPTER VII

VOCATIONAL CHOICE-INTERESTS CONGRUENCY
AND SOCIAL CLASS

The literature shows a considerable amount of agree-
ment for the proposition that overaspiration is one of the
major reasons for the lack of realism of vocational choiCe
among youth. This overaspiration on the part of some young
people probably stems from the fact that although they have
been socialized by the larger society to value social mo-
bility, they have not been properly socialized by the agents

of socialization within their social class sub-cultures to

play the roles which go with prestigeful occupations. This
study focuses upon the kind of interests which are probably
necessary for peOple to learn if they are to be reasonably

happy in playing certain occupational roles.

The highest proportion of youth who have not been
socialized to be professional workers and executives are
probably to be found among the lower classes. Strong has
shown there are statistically significant differences be-
tween the interests of manual workers and business and pro-

fessional men. He has also shown there is a statistically

significant association between the vocational interests of

middle-class fathers and sons. It is quite possible,
95

96
therefore, that lower-class youngsters learn a pattern of
interests which is similar to that of their father's but
dissimilar from the patterns of middle-class fathers.

If the preceding analysis is correct, one would ex-
pect middle-class boys to demonstrate more realism of occu-
pational choice than lower-class boys when vocational
choice-interests congruency is used as a criterion of such
realism. This is because lower-class boys probably tend to
express the value of social mobility at the overt, verbal
level while at the covert level they possess interests which
are, by and large, characteristic of the occupations pursued
by members of their same social class. This may be ex-
pressed in terms of the following testable hypothesis:

Boys whose fathers are professional workers or execu-
tives will have higher Differential Ratios on the
KPR-O than will boys whose fathers are skilled, semi-
skilled, and unskilled workers when the Differential
Ratios are based upon every boy's tentative occupa—
tional choice.

Measurement of social class and vocational choice-
congruency.--Father's occupation was adopted as the cri-
terion of social class, and the occupational information was
obtained mostly from a questionnaire sent to each boy's par-
ents in 1959. It was corroborated by data collected from
the students and their school records. Edwards and Wilson
(1961) used the data on father's occupation to classify the

students according to the farmer's system of occupational

categories.*

 

*See Appendix D for a list of these categories.

97

Edwards' and Wilson's "unskilled manual labor" and
"semi-skilled manual labor" categories together were used to
identify the lower-class boys. Similarly, Edwards' and
Wilson's "professional" and "executive" categories were com-
bined for the purpose of identifying the middle-class re-
spondents. This resulted in two sub-samples, one at each
end of the occupational prestige hierarchy.

Vocational choice-interest congruency, which.was
used as an index of realism of vocational choice, was oper-
ationally defined in terms of Differential Ratios" from the
Kuder Preference Record-Occupational. The DR denoting the
highest degree of congruency is represented by ++ followed
by ‘th, -+9, etc. The lowest degree of congruency is de-
noted by ~-, which is followed by ~10, -9, etc.

Analysis.--The Differential Ratios for fifty-five

 

respondents were classified into two frequency distribu-
tions. One distribution was for the twenty-four boys clas-
sified as lower-class, and the other distribution was for
the thirty-one boys classified as middle-class. A one-
tailed Smirnov test was used to test the null hypothesis
that the two groups were drawn from populations with equal
Differential Ratios. The level of confidence was set at
.05.

Results and their interpretation.--Table 11 shows

the percentage of the lower-class boys and the middle-class

 

4"see pages 69-62.

98

TABLE ll.--Percentage of respondents classified by social
class and occupational choice-interests congruency

 

'1

 

 

Differential Lower Class Middle Class
Ratios (N=-2A) (N=31)
"' " e o e e e e o e e o 20.8 6.5
“'10 e e e e e e o e o e 000 000
- g 0 e o e o e e e e o ’402 6.5
- O o e e o e e e e e 000 000
"' 7 e e e o o e e e e o 8.3 000
- 6 e e o o e e o e o o 000 302
- E e e o o o e e o o o 000 3.2
" e o o e o e o o e e 803 3.2
"’ 3 o e o e e o e e e e 803 605
"' 2 e e o e e o e e e e 0.0 302
-.......... 17.2 0.0
2 e o e o e e o o o e 1205 302
E e e o o e o o o o 0 303 go;
5 e e e e e e o o e e (+02 605
6 e e o o o e o o e o 0.0 3.2
7 e e e e o o o e e e 0.0 0.0
8.......... 0.0 6.5
9 e e e e e e o e e e 0.0 000
10 e e e o e e e o o e 000 302
++ e e o o o o e e e o 16.7 35.5
Total . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.1

 

7L2 :- 10.770, dr- 2, p (.05 (one-tailed test)

boys who were assigned one of the twenty-one possible Dif-
ferential Ratios. The cumulative percentage of lower-class
boys who received a DR of +3 or less on vocational choice-
interests congruency was 83.3 per cent compared to only
38.7 per cent for the middle-class boys receiving the same

ratings. In other words, the percentage of lower-class

99

respondents who made no better than a rating of +3 on occu-
pational choice-interests congruency was less than half the
percentage of the lower-class respondents who received a
similar rating.

The difference between the above percentages is
.hh6, when expressed as a pr0portion, and this is equal to
a chi-square value of 10.770 (one-tailed). The latter value
is considerably more than the 5.991 value for chi square as-
sociated with the .05 level of confidence. The null hypoth-
esis was, therefore, rejected, and the above alternative hy-
pothesis was accepted.

Conclusion and discussion.--The findings from the
preceding analysis support the conclusion that middle-class
boys have tentative vocational choices which are more con-
sistent with their inventoried vocational interests than do
lower-class boys. The following two propositions have been
offered to explain this generalization: (1) Young people
who are socialized within all social classes internalize, to
some extent, the mobility orientation shared by the larger
society. When these youths are asked to report their tenta-
tive occupational choice or expectation, their responses re-
flect this mobility orientation somewhat independently of
their chances of realizing their expectations. (2) The so-
cialization processes in our social stratification system
probably operate to insure middle class youngsters' learning
of the patterns of interests associated with the most

sought-after occupations to a greater degree than is the

 

100

case with lower-class youngsters.

References

Edwards, T. Bentley and Wilson, Alan B. A Study of Some
Social and Psychological Factors Influencing Educa-
pional Achievement. A Final Report to the United
States Office of Education, Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare. Prepared b the Authors
Pursuant to CE Contract No. SAE 77 7. Berkeley,
Calif.: Department of Education, University of
California, June, 1961. (Mimeographed.)

CHAPTER VIII

APPARENT CRYSTALLIZATION OF
TENTATIVE OCCUPATIONAL
CHOICE

Measurement, Analysis, Results,
and Conclusion

 

There is good reason to believe that college stu-
dents who have made occupational choices which are consonant
with their vocational interests have crystallized their de-
cision to a greater degree than students who have made
choices which are not consonant with their interests. It
has been pointed out in Chapter III how this generalization
is consistent with existing theory and how it has been sup-
ported by research findings. This generalization, however,
may not be applied to the population studied in this inves-
tigation.

Ginzberg and his colleagues at Columbia have made
the following very clear: high school boys have not had the
experience necessary to synthesize their interests, values,
and aptitudes with what they know about the world to as
great an extent as college students. Therefore, the follow-
ing research question has been posed: Will the boys com-
prising the congruent sub-sample differ from those making up

101

102
the incongruent sub-sample in terms of apparent crystalliza-
tion of occupational choice?

Measurement.--Items g, h, 6, 7, and 8 of the ques-

 

tionnaire were made to tap crystallization of occupational
choice. Wallace (19h9) used similar items in his study.
Items g and h are reproduced below:

g. Please list below the things which you have de-
cided might very well keep you from entering what
you think is your future line of work.

h. Please list below the things which you have de-
cided would be ggdesirable about being in the kind
of work you think you will enter.

Their use in measuring apparent crystallization of tentative
occupational choice is based on the assumption that students
with high crystallization of choice entertain fewer reserva-
tions about the nature of their chosen line of work than do
students with low crystallization. When the reaponses to
both the above items were summed for each respondent, the
results ranged from zero to six. The students listing six
disadvantages received the lowest rating for crystallization
and the students listing no disadvantages were given the
highest rating.

Questionnaire items 6, 7, and 8 are as follows:

6. How interested are you about entering the line of
work you think you will follow?

7. To what extent do you feel you have what it takes
to be successful in the line of work you think
you will enter?

8. If you consider your answer to question "b" on the
first page as your vocational aim, how satisfied
are you with this aim?

103
They are aimed at identifying varying degrees of commitment
to tentative vocational choice among the reSpondents. Each
boy rated himself in terms of three possible levels of com-
mitment. For example, he was asked to check one of the fol-
lowing phrases in response to question 6 above: (1) "only
slightly interested," (2) "reasonably well interested," or
(3) "very strongly interested".

Analysis.--The ratings described above were analyzed
by cross-tabulating them according to occupational choice-
interests congruency. The Smirnov test was employed to take
full advantage of the ordinal nature of the data being an-
alyzed. Two-tailed tests were used, and .05 was the level
of confidence adopted.

Results and their interpretation.--The #1 respond-
ents in the incongruent group listed a total of 107 disad-
vantages regarding their expected occupation. The somewhat
larger group of A6 congruent respondents listed only 105
disadvantages. All the boys reported from 0 to 6 reserva-
tions about their tentative occupational choice. The per-
centage of the respondents reporting each of these frequen-
cies is shown in Table 12 for both the congruent and incon-
gruent sub-samples. When the difference between the cumula-
tive distributions of pr0portions for the sub-samples were
determined, the largest difference was found to equal only
.169. This value is considerably short of the .292 corre-
sponding to a probability of .05 (two-tailed), and, conse-
quently, it was not considered to be statistically

10L,
significant.
TABLE l2.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-

tional choice-interests congruency and number of reserva-
tions concerning their chosen vocation

 

 

 

 

Reservations Inffiigfiggnt C?§§ffiz?t
0 0 e o e e e e e e e e o e [+08 6.5
1 e e e e e e e e e e e o o 1905 3h08
2 o e e e e e o e e e e e o 3’401 19.5
i e o e e e e e e e e e e e 1701 1502
o e e e e e e e c o e o c 703 1300
5 e o e e e e e e o o e o e 908 8.7
6 e o e o e c e e o e o e e 703 202
TOtal e e e o e e e e e e 9909 9909

 

D= .169, p > .05 (two-tailed test)

The distributions for the incongruent and congruent
groups shown in each of the three parts of Table 13 are all
quite similar. The observed values of D for "self-rating of
fitness," "satisfaction with occupational choice," and "in-
terest in occupation chosen" are .103, .103, and .126, re-
spectively. All three of these fall short of the .292 asso-
ciated with the .05 level of confidence (two-tailed), and,
therefore, not considered statistically significant.

Conclusion and discussion.--The findings support the
conclusion that no difference between the congruent and in-

congruent groups exists with regard to apparent

105

TABLE l3.--Percentage of respondents classified by occupa-
tional choice-interests congruency and ratings on three
aspects of occupational choice crystallization

‘-
L

Incon ruent Co ruent
Self-Rating (N ful) (£2 ’16)

 

 

Fitness for Occupgtion Chosen

 

 

 

Poorly fitted e e e e o e 0 1,406 (4.03

Well fitted . . . . . . . 63.h 67.

Very well fitted . . . . . 22.0 28.3
Total . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0

 

D= .103, p > .05 (two-tailed test)

 

Satisfaction with Occupational Choice

 

 

Barely satisfied . . . 1%.6 h.3
Reasonably well satisfied . 5 .6 71.8
Entirely satisfied . . . . 26.8 23.9

TOtal e c e o e e e e e c 10000 10000

 

D= .103, p > .05 (two-tailed test)

106

TABLE l3~Continued

 

 

Self-Rating Inggegfigint C?§%ffig?t

 

Interest in Occupation Chosen

 

 

 

Only slightly interested . . 12.2 6.5
Reasonably well interested . h3.9 37.0
Very strongly interested . . h3.9 56.5

Total . O C C O O . O 0 O . 100.0 100.0

 

D= .126, p > .05 (two-tailed test)

crystallization of tentative occupational choice. This in-
dicates that, unlike university men students, eleventh-grade
boys with an occupational choice which is consonant with
their inventoried interests have not crystallized their
choice to a greater degree than their classmates whose

choice is not consonant with their interests.

References

Wellace, Wimburn L. "The Relationship of Certain Variables
to Discrepancy Between Expressed and Inventoried
Vocational Interest." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Michigan, 1989. (Microfilmed.)

CHAPTER IX

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Summary of Conclusions

 

Realism of occupational choice.--Ginzberg and his

associates have conceptualized realism of occupational
choice as a developmental period through which young people
typically pass before crystallizing their vocational deci-
sion. These writers have described this period as one in
which youth begin to modify their tentative occupational
choices in terms of their increasingly expanding knowledge
of the world around them. Before reaching this stage, young
people make their choice primarily in terms of their inter-
ests and values.

On the basis of the study's findings, it is possible
to state certain conclusions regarding the relationships be-
tween realism of occupational choice and selected variables.
The conclusions provide evidence about the validity of
Ginzberg's and his associates' theory, and they point to
further research.

A positive relationship exists between the following
variables: (1) ability to estimate the agreement between

one's measured vocational interests and the interests of men

107

108
in the occupation one has tentatively chosen, and (2) con-
gruency between inventoried vocational interests and tenta-
tive occupational choice. Such a relationship is consistent
with Ginzberg's theory because the ability to compare one's
interests with the interests of others is a necessary condi-
tion for bringing one's vocational plans into line with
one's knowledge of the occupational world. The findings
also show that a substantial number of boys are unable to
make accurate estimates of how well their interests and the
interests of others agree.

No relationship exists between these two variables:
(1) ability to estimate the agreement between one's measured
scholastic ability and the scholastic ability of one's class-
mates, and (2) tentative occupational choice-interests con-
gruency. This conclusion is not directly relevant to real-
ism of vocational choice, as defined by Ginzberg g£_gl., but
the research results upon which the conclusion is based show
that the respondents are capable of making rather good esti-
mates of their academic ability compared to that of their
peers.

There is a positive relationship between the use of
school as the main source of information about one's chosen
occupation and vocational choice-interests congruency. The
conclusion refines Ginzberg's model of occupational choice
by suggesting that realism of choice will vary according to
the quality of the informational resources used to gain

knowledge of the world of work.

109

An association exists between the following: (1)
the number of sources of information used in making a voca-
tional choice, and (2) the agreement between occupational
choice and inventoried vocational interests. This is in
line with the theoretical framework used in this study. It
would be an oversimplification to conclude that the amount
of knowledge which boys possess concerning the occupation of
their choice is entirely the result of the number of infor-
mational resources they use. It was suggested earlier that

the quality of resources also play a part in how much boys

know about occupations; however, the evidence concerning the
quantity of these sources of information is stronger than
the evidence regarding the quality of the sources.

The number of times boys visit their counselor, as
measured in this study, is not related to occupational
choice-interests congruency. This should not be interpreted
to mean that both a knowledge of self and of occupations is
not a necessary condition for realism of occupational
choice. There is a more plausible interpretation: know-
ledge of self and of occupations is not a function of the
frequency of counselor visits. Therefore, the number of
times students confer with their counselor during their
junior year probably should not be used as a measure of how
well students know themselves and various occupational roles.

This interpretation is somewhat disturbing. It im-
plies that the high school guidance workers involved in this

study are not performing their role as Warner, Havighurst,

110
and Loeb defined it in Who Shall Be Educated?. However, the
relationship between counselors' individual vocational guid-
ance in the high school and students' tentative occupational
choice-interests congruency should be studied more before
any conclusions are made about the effect of the former upon
the latter.

There is a positive relation between prudentness and
vocational interests-occupational choice congruency, and it
was shown to be independent of scholastic ability. Boys who
are prudent oriented, as the attitudinal trait has been
measured in this study, are more apt to make a congruent
choice than are boys who are immediate oriented. This con-
clusion would appear to support the theory of Ginzberg and
his associates concerning the role which compromise, delayed
gratification, and a sense of temporal order play in the
process of occupational choice.

A positive relationship also seems to exist between
social class and occupational choice-vocational interests
congruency. It was demonstrated that high school boys from
middle-class families have higher congruency scores than
boys from lower-class families. It was suggested that this
is the result of youths' differential socialization within
the matrices of different social class sub-cultures coupled
with youths' internalization of the social mobility value
which is part of the American ethos.

Apparent crystallization of occupational choice.--As

it has been conceptualized by Ginzberg and his associates,

lll
bona fide crystallization denotes the synthesis of values,
interests, aptitudes, and objective reality which stems from
appropriate experiences with these elements of occupational
choice. It results in a commitment to a chosen occupation.
Apparent crystallization lacks both the synthesis, based
upon experience, and the commitment.

No contingency was found between apparent crystal-
lization and vocational interests-occupational choice con-
gruency. This conclusion is consistent with the theoretical
frame of reference used in this study.

Comparison of bpys whose occupational choice is key-
ed for the KPR-O and the boys whose choice is not keygd.--
Because almost forty-five per cent of the respondents who
had a tentative vocational choice had to be eliminated from
the analysis due to the absence of an appropriate key for
scoring their responses, a comparison was made between the
youths who were eliminated and the boys who were included in
the analysis.

The keyed group tended to select major professional
and executive vocations; whereas, the non-keyed group was
more apt to choose lower and upper white-collar occupations.
Kuder, like Strong, has over-sampled the most prestigeful
occupations for which to construct keys. The keys which
Strong designed for the SVIB are particularly well suited
for his instrument because it has been used almost exclu-
sively with university students. It does not appear likely
that Kuder's new instrument will supplant the SVIB as a tool

112

for the college vocational counselor. The Kuder—Occupation-
al's greatest potential seems to lie in the field of high
school counseling where its relatively low cost brings it
within the means of public secondary schools. But unless
people who are responsible for the construction of the in-
strument's keys find ways of overcoming the bias in their Fa {a
sampling of occupations to key, this potential will probably .

not be realized. This bias works against boys who intend to

 

enter the occupations which have been providing new oppor- ~ @
tunities for employment to replace the ones which have dis- "
appeared because of technological changes in our economy.

The keyed and non-keyed groups were not found to
differ in terms of their members' socio-economic status,
their scholastic ability, nor their need for vocational
counseling.

Before listing some suggestions for further re-
search, some of what was written earlier concerning the gen-
eralizability of the above conclusions will be briefly re-
viewed. The extent to which the conclusions may be inter-
polated to the pOpulation from which the research sample is
presumed to have been drawn depends upon the extent to which
the latter is representative of the former. The evidence
indicates that the following respondents are probably over-
represented in the sample: Oriental boys who tend to make
tentative occupational choices from among the professional
occupations. Similarly, the following probably-are under-

represented in the sample: (1) Negro students who tend to

113
select low-status occupations and (2) Caucasian students

whose families are geographically and, perhaps, socially

 

 

mObile 0
Suggestions for Further Research
Experimental studies.--Some of this study's conclu-
sions suggest further investigation of boys' ability to make rah‘e

estimates of the congruency between their interests and the

interests of successful, satisfied members of the boys' ten-

 

tatively chosen occupation. This skill must surely be a ii
necessary condition for the making of an appropriate voca-
tional selection, and it would be feasible to set up an ex-
periment wherein the effect of certain independent variables
upon the skill's development could be ascertained. One in-
dependent variable could be the use of the traditional Kuder
Preference Record-Vocational Form employed in many public
schools today. The other independent variable could be the
use of the KPH-Occupational Form. It should be practicable
to randomly assign certain students to one or the other of
two treatment groups and to control the students' socio-
economic status by the selection of appropriate sub-samples.
The data should be collected through interviews, for the
most part.

The experimental study described above could serve
two purposes at least. First, it would produce objective
evidence regarding the relative advantages of using two dif-

ferent kinds of instruments for measuring vocational

111.
interests. Second, it should clarify why the number of
times a student receives vocational counseling from his
counselor is not related to his vocational interests-
occupational choice congruency.

Correlational studies.--The study's conclusion re-
garding the school as a source of vocational information de-
mands further study of the relative value of selected infor-
mational resources. A replication of this part of the pres-
ent investigation should include the use of a larger sample
and of interviewers to collect some of the data. If such a
replication were to produce the same conclusions suggested
by this study, it would be possible to formulate additional
hypotheses to be tested experimentally. This might involve
the use of group guidance for the parents of selected boys
and of occupational orientation classes as experimental
treatments.

The conclusion regarding apparent crystallization of
occupational choice suggests a longitudinal study of both
those boys who go on to college for professional training
and those who go into the labor market immediately after
graduation. Such a study should be designed to tell us
whether or not vocational choice-interests congruency in-
creases as bona fide crystallization of occupational choice
is achieved. The results should produce a refinement of the
theory outlined in Occupational Choice.

The investigation reported here also suggests the

possibility of studying over-aspiration and under-aspiration

115
of occupational choice using the same type of research de-
sign. The respondents' scholastic ability and socio-
economic status could be experimentally controlled, and some
of the data could be obtained through interviews. The sub-
sample of over-aspirers among the incongruent group would be
compared to the under-aspirers in terms of the respondents'
parents' ambition, knowledge of occupations, personality ad-
justment, and high schools' social class culture. The in-
formation gained from such a study should be useful to
school authorities and counselors wishing to promote the
kind of vocational guidance program described twenty years

ago in Who Shall Be Educated?.

APPENDIX A

QUESTIONNAIRE ON VOCATIONAL INTERESTS

NAME (print) COUNSELOR

(last) (first) (initial)

DIRECTIONS: After you are sure what each question below

 

asks for, please write complete and readable answers in the
blanks provided.

8.

If you had the chance to go into any kind of work you
wanted when you are all through with your education,
what line of work would you choose? Think only of what
you would like to do, what you would be happy at. Do
not think about the abilities required or the training
which is necessary to get into this kind of work. Just
write down the name of the line of work you would like
to be in. If you want more than one, write them down,
but put your favorite one first.

 

People sometimes think about what they would like to be,
although they don't really believe it could come true.
They usually have a fair idea of what they actually will
do. Now think about what you will really be when you
are no longer a student. What line of work do you actu-
ally think you will be in at that time?

Give a ppecific line of work. For example, write
"plumbing contracting" not "plumbing business," write
"TV repairing," if that is what you mean, rather than
just "electronics," and use the words "mechanical engi-
neering" instead of only "engineer".

You may put down more than one kind of work, if you
wish, but put the one which you think is most likely to
come true first.

 

Although it is very difficult to know who or what influ-
ences our choice of a line of work, it is much.easier to
know from where we got our information about the kind of
work we think we may follow. There are a number of pos-
sible sources of such information but any two boys are

116

117

not likely to have gotten their facts from exactly the
same sources. Please check (V’) the following to show
your source or sources of knowledge about the work you
think you will enter:

1.___family 9.___experience working on
2.___re1atives a job similar to the
fi.___friends line of work you
.___counselors think you will follow
.___teachers --don't overlook reg-
.___books, magazines ular work for parents
7.___shop or class work 10.___watching men doing the
in school line of work
8.__;movies, TV programs ll.___other (specify)

of men in the line
of work

 

Draw a line under the one answer in question "c" above
which has been your most important source of information
about the kind of work you think you will enter.

If you checked answer number "9" in question "c" above,
please write the following in the spaces below: (1) the
nature of the work done, for example, "putting stock
away in a drugstore" instead of only "dru store;" (2)
the number of hours averaged a week; and 3) the number
of weeks you put in on each job.

Average Hours Length of the
Kind or Work a Week Job in Weeks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the beginning of school this year, how many times
have you talked with your counselor either about a fu-
ture line of work or about school matters related to a
future vocation for yourself?

 

Please list below the things which you have decided
might very well keep you from entering what you think is
your future line of work:

1.

 

 

2.

 

 

h.

118
3.

 

 

Please list below the things which you have decided
would be gpdesirable about being in the kind of work you
think you will enter.

1.

 

 

2.

 

 

 

 

DIRECTIONS: After each question below, check (v’) the
phrase which best answers the question. (Pay no attention
to the extra numbers in the margin.)

1.1;.

S.

7.

1

How interested are you about entering the line of work
you think you will follow?

1. only slightly interested

2. __ reasonably well interested

3. very strongly interested

To what extent do you feel you have what it takes to be
successful in the line of work you think you will enter?

1. poorly fitted
2. well fitted
3. very well fitted

If you consider your answer to question "b" on the first
page as your vocational aim, how satisfied.are you with
this aim?

1. barely satisfied

2. reasonably well satisfied

3. entirely satisfied

9.

10.

119

How do you think your interests compare with the inter-
ests of men doing the kind of work you expect to do?

1. different

2. neither different nor the same

3. somewhat the same
h. very much the same

How do you think you compare with other students your
own age when it comes to the following things at school:
(1) understanding the meaning of sentences and knowing
the meaning of words in reading assignments, and (2)
working number problems and solving word problems in
math?

1. low
2. low-average
3. high-average

h. high

 

APPENDIX B
LETTER DISTRIBUTED TO ALL BOYS IN THE SAMPLE

Dear Student:

All of you boys who cooperated in a University of
California research study in 1959 and 1961 are being offered
some extra help in deciding what line of work you should
follow. This help is a chance to find out the following:
(1) your main interests at this important time in your life,
and (2) how your interests compare with those of men in the
line of work you think you will enter.

School counselors have known for a long time that a
man's job satisfaction depends a lot upon the extent to
which his interests are like the interests of men with whom
he works. Choosing a line of work is one of the most impor-
tant decisions_you will make in your life. You owe it to
yourself, therefore, to take advantage of this offer.

These two things are all you need to do in order to
receive this help: (1) take these materials and some time
today when you can work on them by yourself for about an
hour in a quiet place, do what the direction sheet inside
the envelop tells you to do, and (2) return the completed
materials, tomorrow morning, to the same place you received
them.

120

121
You may obtain the results from your counselor dur-

ing the week of June 1 or next Fall, whatever you like.

 

122
DIRECTIONS

So that you may learn about your main interests, it

will be necessary to do the following things in the order in

which they are listed below:

1.

3.

On the black-printed answer sheet, print the following
ggly: (1) your name and (2) your counselor's name, in
the space after the words "SCHOOL 0R GROUP".

Read the directions on the first page of the enclosed
orange booklet with care.

Using the answer sheet, answer all the orange booklet's
questions as directed on its first page. Be sure to
mark your answers on the answer sheet, p22 in the book-
let. Your answers will be worthless if you do anyof
the following: (1) trygto answer the questions the way
ypu think the men in a certain line of work would answer
them; (2lgwork with someone else in answering them; or
(3) fail to follow the directions in the booklet.

Read the questions on the enclosed purple-printed form
entitled "QUESTIONNAIRE ON VOCATIONAL INTERESTS" care-
fully and answer them as accurately and completely as

possible.

DIRECTIONS:

APPENDIX C

PRUDENT-IMMEDIATE SCALE

Underneath each statement below, place a check

before the answer that corresponds most clearly with your
attitude toward the statement.

1.

3.

In a social studies course, A.
I would rather have the
reasons why the U.S. didn't
join the League of Nations
explained to me than try to
figure it out.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
. _slight1y agree
a.— _slightly disagree
5.___moderately disagree
.___strongly disagree 5
I should prefer the live
theater to movies if they
were the same price.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
fi._:_slightly agree
. slightly disagree
. :moderately disagree
.:strongly disagree

Sometimes when a fellow
is out with the gang, he

pretty well has to do a 6.

few things he knows he
really shouldn't.

1. _strongly agree

2. :moderately agree

g.___slightly agree
.___slightly disagree

5.___moderately disagree
.___strongly disagree

123

Mercy killing should be
legalized for cases of
extreme suffering where
there is no hope for
cure e

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
i.__:slight1y agree
. slightly disagree
5._ _moderately disagree
. _strongly disagree

When talking with my
friends in the evening
I'd rather talk about
people we know and have
fun with than talk about
religion or philosophy.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
3.: :slightly agree
. slightly disagree
5.__Tmoderately disagree
.___strongly disagree

The opinion of friends
helps more than reading
in making up my mind.

1. _strongly agree

2. :moderately agree

fl.:slightly agree
n___slightly disagree

5.___moderate1y disagree
.___strongly disagree

7.

9.

The foreign policy of our 10.

government should be based

on high moral principles
even though this may en-
tail a loss of strategic
power of prestige.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
. _slightly agree
fi.: slightly disagree
5.__;moderately disagree
n___strongly disagree

I frequently think about
the reasons for other
people's misbehavior in-
stead of reacting with
irritation.

l._strong1y agree
2. :moderately agree
fi.: :slightly agree
. slightly disagree
5.— _moderately disagree
. :strongly disagree

I never worry about how
things are going to work

out--they usually seem to

take care of themselves.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
. _slightly agree
fi.___slightly disagree
S.___moderately disagree
.___strongly disagree

11.

12.

An impulsive person is
warm and sincere; one
who analyzes his emo-
tions is cold and

" phony" .

1. _strongly agree

2. :moderately agree

fi._ _slightly agree
. _slightly disagree
5. :moderately disagree
6. _strongly disagree

A business man should
make his decisions
strictly according to
the interests of his
business. He should not
worry about what happens
nationally to wages and
prices.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
3.: _slightly agree
. slightly disagree
S.__Jmoderately disagree
.___strongly disagree

Science has definitely
not been able to show
that colored races are
inferior to white races.

1. _strongly agree
2. :moderately agree
i._ _slightly agree
. _slightly disagree
S.— _moderately disagree
. _strongly disagree

2.

3.

APPENDIX D

OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES

Unskilled and semi-skilled manual labor: longshoreman,

gardener, fry cook, teamster, machine operator, filling

station attendant, restaurant worker, janitor, meat cut-
ter.

 

Skilled manual labor: carpenter, butcher, electrician,
machinist, printer, plumber, Jeweler, shoe repair.

Lower white collar: sales clerk, foreman, stenographer,

beautician, policeman, fireman, barber, mailman, model,

union dispatcher, bar-tender, forester, bus driver,

guards, domestics, soft-drink, milk, or bread salesman,
truck-drivers, draftsman (copy), stewardess, athlete
pro .

Upper white collar: salesman, store manager, public
school teacher, nurse, social welfare worker, librarian,
real estate broker, laboratory technician, pharmacist,
pilot, buyer, fire chief, chief of police, commercial
artist, popular entertainer (dance band musician, night
club singer, etc.), probation officer, interior decora-
tor, insurance agent, design draftsman.

Small business--self-employed: barber shop, construc-
tion contractor, service station, beauty shOp, real es-
tate, plumbing shop, repair shops.

 

Merchants-~self-employed: grocers, restaurant or bar

 

owners, wholesale merchants, export-import businesses,
department or variety store owners, broker, contractor.

Farmers, ranchers--self—employed.

Professionals--salaried: engineer, college professor,
school principals and superintendents, minister, jour-
nalist, staff officer (major, colonel).

Professional§--self-employed: doctor, lawyer, dentist,
architect, C.P.A., veterinarian, author.

 

125

 

126

Executive: Corporation presidents, vice-presidents,
district representatives of large firms, diplomat.

Farm laborer.

EA, unemployed, retired, deceased.