The purpose of this study was to see how the high school students choose their colleges and how their choice of colleges is affected by the career decision-making style and career maturity. To achieve this purpose, the variables related to the two sty...
The purpose of this study was to see how the high school students choose their colleges and how their choice of colleges is affected by the career decision-making style and career maturity. To achieve this purpose, the variables related to the two styles have been identified, and it has been investigated how much the career decision-making style are correlated to the college decision-making style.
The concrete range of topics to be covered for the study were as follows:
1. Is career maturity of the high school students related to their personal characteristics(gender, academic marks and academic systems) and environmental variables( schooling and income of their parents)?
2. Is the career decision-making styles of high school students related to their personal characteristics(gender, academic marks and academic systems) and environmental variables( the level of schooling and income
of their parents)?
3. Is the career decision-making style of high school students related to their personal characteristics(gender, academic marks and academic systems) and environmental variables(schooling and income of their parents)?
4. Is there any significant relationship between the career decision-making style, career maturity and career decision-making styles?
The 345 students of 5 high schools were asked to fill out the questionnaires.
Three sets of questionnaires were used: a questionnaire asking about a degree of career maturity developed by Lee, Kee-hak; another questionnaire asking about the career decision-making style used by Kang, Ho-kyoung(2003), which was a revised version of Harren's the Assessment of Career Decision Making(1984) by Koh, Hyang-ja (1992); a third questionnaire asking about the college decision-making style developed by Huh, Wha-ju, which was used by the author's minor correction .
Based on the results of the study, the major findings were as follows:
Firstly, the study has shown that the level of students' career maturity is quite high. There wasn't any significant difference between gender and academic systems. In terms of academic marks, there was a significant difference between the high-level students and the low-level ones. Noteworthy is the fact that the level of income and schooling of their parents didn't have any impact on students' career maturity.
Secondly, in career decision-making style, the rate of the sub-styles such as rational, intuitive and dependent was almost the same. Here in this case, gender and academic marks were significant variables. More study remains to be done in regards to the effect of income and schooling of their parents on career decision-making.
Thirdly, The analysis of college decision-making revealed that the rate of the department-oriented style, compared with the other sub-styles, was the highest, and then college-oriented one, and the entrance(or passing)-oriented one was the lowest. And academic systems and academic marks were significant variables. More careful research is required on variables such as gender and schooling of their parents. More study also remains to be done on the variable like academic marks in that the variable of the department-oriented style was not statistically significant. and that academic marks were more important than had been expected for college entrance.
Lastly, the study of correlation between the career decision-making style and college decision-making showed that there were some meaningful results. As the level of students' career maturity increases, the career decision-making style was highly correlated to the intuitive style; college decision-making style, to the department-oriented; college-oriented. style, to the dependent; the department-oriented , to the intuitive; the entrance(or passing)-oriented, to rational and dependent; away-from-hometown to dependent. Out of these, there was an interesting correlation between the college-oriented. style and the dependent one and more study is needed.
In conclusion, there was partially a correlation between the sub-styles of career decision-making style and college decision-making style. And the influence of variables such as sex and academic marks could not be ignored. So careful approach is required to explain college decision-making style mainly on the basis of career decision-making style, which means that more systematic and elaborate methodology should be developed to cover college decision-making style.