engleski

Vocational interests in early and middle adolescence

Numerous studies have explored vocational interest structure across the globe and different cross-cultural equivalence has been established for various models of interests. The strongest cross-cultural stability was observed for the Spherical model of interests, which accounts not only for the variability of interests towards different fields of work (e.g. working with people, things, ideas or data) but also for interests towards occupations and working activities that require different educational levels (i.e. prestige). In Croatia, there is a rich history of exploration of vocational interests in adolescence, in particular in the last 15 years. According to the findings based on more than 20 samples of Croatian adolescents aged 11 to 21 years, a stable vocational interest structure appeared at the age of 14, and the Personal Globe Inventory (PGI) served as the best measure of interest models. However, by now PGI was not applied in Croatian samples younger than 14 years. Therefore, we wanted to evaluate the vocational interest structure of early and middle adolescents using the PGI. Early adolescents were enrolled in the 5th grade (N=409), 6th grade (N=435) and 7th grade (N=517) of primary school (approximately 11 to 13 years). Middle adolescents were enrolled in the 1st grade (N=528), 2nd grade (N=578) and 3rd grade (N=785) of secondary school (approximately 15-17 years). Both hexagonal and octagonal models of interests have been tested in all six samples and results indicated the expected course of development of vocational interest structure throughout adolescence, with a noticeable increase in the model-data fit at the age of 13. Presented results are discussed in the framework of theoretical expectations and previous empirical studies, and the implications for career counselling practices are given.

vocational interests, structure, differentiation, adolescence

nije evidentirano