A longitudinal study of the occupational aspirations and perceptions of fifteen to sixteen year-old South African adolescents
- Authors: Marshall, Joanne
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: Vocational interests -- Research -- South Africa , Children -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Personality and occupation -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:9887 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1183 , Vocational interests -- Research -- South Africa , Children -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Personality and occupation -- South Africa
- Description: While career development is viewed as a lifelong process, there are numerous limitations regarding existing career theories and research pertaining to the adolescent population. Further, insufficient longitudinal research represents one of the major obstacles for a more holistic understanding of career development across the lifespan. Thus, the present longitudinal project of which the current study forms a part was initiated to address the lack of research and theory concerning adolescent career development. The larger longitudinal project intended to make information available regarding the occupational aspirations and perceptions of a sample of South African children and adolescents, from early childhood into their adolescent years. The current study investigates the occupational aspiration development of 15 to 16 year old South African adolescents. It is argued that the South African knowledge base on career development behaviour still requires extensive development, especially with regards to adolescent career development. The current longitudinal study aimed to explore and describe possible developments and changes over a two year period in the interest typology, occupational status level and occupational gender stereotypes of the 43 adolescents. Additionally, the study aimed to explore and describe the adolescents' reflections on their own occupational aspiration development. The findings of this study will provide necessary baseline information on the development of South African adolescents' occupational aspirations and will offer valuable recommendations for the future development of adolescent career education programmes. Adolescent and career development theories were used to provide a context for the current study. Semi-structured interviews and biographical questionnaires were utilized to record verbal data which was transposed into nominal data for analysis. Thus, the current study was quantitative in nature. The semi-structured interview comprised four general aspects that included: the adolescents' occupational aspirations, the number of occupations they knew about, how much they knew about the expressed occupations, and the extent to which they held gender stereotypes concerning fourteen different occupations. The data gained was coded according to Holland's (1985) classification system of interest typologies. Also, the adolescents' occupational aspirations were coded according to their status levels. The coded data was subsequently analysed using both descriptive statistics in the form of frequency counts and percentages as well as inferential statistics in the form of chi-square analysis. Content analysis was also conducted on the adolescents' reflections on their own career development as a means to extract themes. The results indicated that adolescence was an important phase of career development and the findings supported adolescent and career development theories. The results of the study also indicated that the majority of adolescents aspired to Investigative type occupations across both years of the study and most adolescents consistently aspired to high status occupations. In addition, adolescents do not appear to gender stereotype in terms of occupations. Lastly, it was found that most adolescents could reflect on their career development, predominantly attributing changes in their occupational aspirations to changes in their interests. The present study has made available important information regarding the occupational aspiration development of a group of South African adolescents, which can be utilized in further research and as a foundation on which to develop career education programmes.
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- Date Issued: 2010
The appropriateness of Holland's interest code typology for South African field guides
- Authors: Allen, Lynda Jean
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Personality and occupation -- South Africa , Vocational interests -- South Africa , Personality
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:9846 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/432 , Personality and occupation -- South Africa , Vocational interests -- South Africa , Personality
- Description: The foundational principles of Holland’s (1985b, 1992, 1997) vocational theory state that career choice is an expression of personality, in that individuals with specific personality types seek out work or learning environments that match their personality types. Furthermore, interest inventories such as the Self-Directed Search (Holland, Powell, & Fritzsche, 1994) can be regarded as personality inventories and used to ensure that individuals find themselves in a working environment that is best suited to their interests and personality type. In addition to instruments that measure interests, Holland also developed dictionaries of occupations coded according to the characteristics and interests of different occupations and working environments, such as the Dictionary of Holland occupational codes (Gottfredson & Holland, 1996). The level of congruence between personality types and occupational types is linked to career satisfaction, stability and achievement. This premise only holds true, however, if the codes for the occupational environment suggested by Holland (1985c) are, in fact, valid. In other words, do the codes suggested by Holland match the personality types of individuals entering or who are already employed in a particular work or learning environment? There have been many studies conducted with regard to the validity of Holland’s prescribed interest typology codes. Spokane, Meier and Catalano (2000) located a large number of empirical studies published since 1985 that relate directly to the validity of Holland’s codes, many of which have suggested that the existing codes may not be valid. There is a scarcity of such research in South Africa, especially with regard to vital and growing occupational fields, such as the ecotourism industry, that are so important to the economic well-being of the country. Consequently, the overall aim of the present study was to explore and describe the interest codes of male and female South African student and working field guides in order to discuss the appropriateness of the occupational codes prescribed by Holland for the field guiding profession. The quantitative design of the study was exploratory-descriptive in nature and made use of the Self-Directed Search Questionnaire (Holland, Fritzsche, & Powell, 1994). The total sample consisted of 100 participants (68 male and 32 female), constituting 40 working field guides and 60 field guide students. Descriptive analyses were conducted with the use of frequency tables, charts, means and standard ix deviations. In addition, Independent sample t-tests were computed in order to describe and compare the mean scores of the interests for males and females, and to compare the mean scores of the interests for student and working field guides. The results of this study suggest that the prescribed occupational code (SRI; Social, Realistic, Investigative) for South African field guides may not be appropriate and that an interest profile such as SREI AC may be more appropriate. These results, in combination with the findings of the research review, suggest the need for a more extensive, cross-cultural study to determine the appropriateness of Holland’s occupational codes for South African occupations, which may lead to a revision of the South African Dictionary of Occupations (Taljaard & von Mollendorf, 1987).
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- Date Issued: 2006