Characteristics of inventoried and expressed interests in high school education

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The Vocational interest in the processes of advice and guidance, represents an essential aspect to assess given its key role in making career decisions. The existence of coherence between the expressed and inventoried interests may be an indicator of stability and vocational identity at the same time as an indicator of future career satisfaction and achievement. The proposed objectives in this study were: 1) To Identify the main characteristics of the inventoried and expressed interests of students in Secondary Education taking into account the course they were taking; 2) To check the strength of association and consistency between both. METHOD. The sample consisted in 2.322 subjects of Secondary Compulsory Education (ESO) students (52,8% female and 48,2% male) with a mean age of 14.68 years and a standard deviation of 1.29, from different areas of Spain. The study was of a descriptive and correlational nature. It used ANOVA and Chi-Square tests to check for differences between courses. EXPLORA (Questionnaire Vocational Guidance) was applied for inventoried and expressed interests. RESULTS. In regards to expressed intrests, there was an unequal distribution concerning the professional fields of Welfare Social and Scientific-Research which were the most chosen fields. In connection with the inventoried interests, the Social-Welfare and Artistic-Creative fields appear as the preferred fields. The consistency of the expressed interests and coherence between the expressed interests and the inventory was average, giving the case that both indices increased as students moved from one moves from grade level. DISCUSSION. The results obtained in connection with the coherence and consistency allow us to emphasize the appropriateness of assessing the interests expressed as inventoried and to develop interventions that improve both types of indexes so as to enhance the quality of decision-making.