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Predictive value and psychological meaning of vocational aspirations

Journal of Vocational BehaviorPublished 1 June 1975
John L. Holland, Gary D. Gottfredson
Citations79
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score2.79
SNIP2.41

Abstract

The psychological meaning and predictive value of a person's vocational aspirations were examined by applying Holland's typology to the vocational aspirations of high school juniors (N = 1005), college juniors (N = 692), employed adults (N = 140), and a second sample of college students studied over a one-year interval (N = 624). The aspirational data were obtained from the Daydreams section of the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1972). Categorical and correlational analyses show that a person's retrospective vocational aspirations have coherence and yield efficient predictions of subsequently expressed choice. In addition, the degree of coherence or similarity among a person's vocational aspirations provides a potentially useful index of a person's decision-making ability.

Keywords

PsychologySocial Sciences