Occupational aspirations and expectations of Australian adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents across the five years of high school (169 females and 164 males) completed a survey which identified occupational status aspirations and expectations and RIASEC coded aspirations and expectations. As the focus of the study was to explore relationships between these traditional constructs and key career development constructs. Measures of career maturity, career indecision, self-esteem, career goals and school achievement were also completed. Discrepancies between occupational aspirations and expectations were reported and the relevance of including career development constructs into these investigations was validated. Occupational status aspirations were associated with school achievement, self-esteem, and career maturity. Students who reported achieving well at school, were more career mature and had higher self-esteem were more likely to aspire to professional status occupations than students who held skilled status aspirations, and students who held semi-professional aspirations having more career knowledge than students who held skilled aspirations.