The purpose of this study was to understand how parent-adolescent communication styles and career decision-making styles varied with background variables, examine correlation between parent-adolescent communication styles and career decision-making st...
The purpose of this study was to understand how parent-adolescent communication styles and career decision-making styles varied with background variables, examine correlation between parent-adolescent communication styles and career decision-making styles, recognize the school students to perform rational career decision-making, and suggest to desirable parent-adolescent communication styles.
The research questions for this study are as follows :
First, how do parent-adolescent communication styles vary with background variables?
Second, how do career decision-making styles vary with background variables?
Third, do parent-adolescent communication styles correlate with career decision-making styles?
The subjects were the boy and girl students in their first year of two regular middle schools and two business middle schools selected from the city of Yangju. After a survey was conducted, the responses were obtained from 287 students, including 147 boys and 140 girls.
For data analysis, SPSS 14.0 program was utilized. Frequency and percentage were computed to identify the general characteristics of the participants. To address the research qusetions, mean ad standard deviation were calculated, and t-test, f-test, Scheffe and Pearson'r coefficient were employed.
This study obtained the following results :
First, parent-adolescent communication varied significantly with background variables. Children had more open communication with their mother than with their father; particularly, female students rather than male ones had open communication with their mother. There was no significant effect on parent-adolescent communication by parent's educational level. The higher economic status, the more open the communication; the lower economic status, the more closed the communication.
Second, career decision-making styles varied with background variables. Female students performed more dependent career decision-making than male ones. As for curricula, there was no significant effect on career decision-making.
High economic status tended to perform rational career decision-making, while low economic status tended to perform dependent decision-making.
Third, there was significant correlation between parent-adolescent communication styles and career decision-makong styles. Middle school students, who had open communication with their parents, performed rational career decision-making, while who had closed communication with their parents performed dependent decision-making.
As it can be seen above, open communication with parents is so closely related to rational decision-making. In order for middle school students to perform rational career decision-making in the most desirable style, hence, open communication is essential to express their own ideas, views, emotions, concerns to their parents. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare and implement counselling programs and education programs for parents and students to activate open communication between parents and adolescents.