Career decision making among adolescents in relation to gender locale parenting style and self concept

Abstract

Career decision making is a process of choosing career path by reviewing one s own skills, interests and ultimately reaching at rationale decision. The process of career decision making is influenced by many internal as well as external factors. For the present study gender and self concept which are internal factors; and locale and parenting style which are external factors were selected. A sample of 800 adolescents studying in 10th standard in Government Schools affiliated to Punjab School Education Board was taken from Bathinda and Ludhiana district of Punjab state. Career Decision Making Scale (Singh, 2014), Parenting Style Scale (developed by researcher) and Children s Self Concept Scale (Ahluwalia and Singh, 2012) were used to collect the data from respondents. Descriptive statistics i.e. mean, median, mode, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis and inferential statistics i.e. t-test, product moment correlation, analysis of variance (2x2x3x3) and step wise regression were employed to analyse the data. The findings of the study revealed no gender difference in career decision making among adolescents. The study revealed significance difference in career decision making among adolescents in terms of locale, self concept and parenting style. Further it was found that career decidedness had significant correlation with self concept and parenting style. Authoritative and authoritarian parenting style; and self concept were found significant predictors of career decidedness but only two dimensions of parenting style, namely authoritarian and authoritative significantly predicted career indecision among adolescents with low variance. Educational implications of the study and suggestions for further research are given. newline