Vocational Preference and Career Development of Students Entering Postsecondary Agriculture Programs in Illinois

169 p.Thesis (Educat.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.Agricultural occupations provide career opportunities for a substantial segment of the American workforce. While farm production workers have declined in numbers over the past three decades there has been an expansion of employment in the non-production sectors of agriculture with substantially increased opportunities for females and workers without agricultural experience.The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent students, entering postsecondary institutions in Illinois for the study of agriculture, differ in vocational preference and career development. Twelve research questions were answered by this research.Data were gathered from 667 subjects representing a proportionate random sample of students entering four universities and eight community colleges in Illinois in the fall of 1983. Instruments used were the Vocational Preference Inventory (Holland, 1978) and Career Development Inventory--college and university form (Thompson, Lindeman, Super, Jordaan, & Myers, 1981). Data on socioeconomic status, academic achievement, and agricultural experience were secured through a six item questionnaire and research assistance from American College Testing Program. Analytical treatment included univariate analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance, Pearson's and partial correlations, and discriminant function analysis.This research found a significant difference (p < .05) in Vocational Preference Inventory scale scores between community college occupational students and their community college transfer and university cohorts.Female students responded significantly (p < .001) higher than male students on all Vocational Preference Inventory scales except realistic, masculinity, and infrequency.Postsecondary students with experience in agricultural work scored higher than the inexperienced on the Vocational Preference Inventory scales of realistic, conventional, enterprising, masculinity, and infrequency, while scoring lower on the intellectual, social, self-control, status, and acquiescence scales.Community college occupational students responded significantly different (p < .001) from community college transfer and university students on the four measures of career development underlying the Career Orientation Total scale of the Career Development Inventory.Female students in all institutional groups scored significantly (p < .001) higher than male students on the four measures of career development underlying the Career Orientation Total scale of the Career Development Inventory.Recommendations were made for policy makers, administrators, and researchers to improve career knowledge and attitudes.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD