FACTORS AFFECTING NONTRADITIONAL EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN COLLEGE GRADUATES

The purposes of this study were to specify a model for predicting women\u27s career choice and to test such a model on a large nationally representative sample of young women. Four sets of variables were identified in the construction of an enrichment model: family background factors, personality characteristics and values, academic ability, and characteristics of the post high school experience. Data from the National Longitudinal Study (NLS) of the High School Class of 1972 were selected for analysis. A sample was drawn of 1,078 white women who graduated from high school in 1972. These women were also college graduates who were employed on a full time basis in 1979 or who were attending graduate or professional school as full time students in 1979. Data were selected from questionnaires distributed in 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1979 to test the twelve hypotheses underlying the enrichment model of women\u27s career choice. Logit path anaylsis was the statistical technique employed. Support was not obtained for all theoretically interesting factors in the model. Although mother\u27s education, math ability, verbal ability, and marital status had significant zero order relations with nontraditional career choice, mother\u27s employment, mother\u27s occupation, self concept, socioeconomic status, work values score, influence of others, sorority membership, and number of children in 1979 were not significant in their zero order relations with the dependent variable. In the two path analyses, mother\u27s education, math ability, verbal ability, and mother\u27s employment had significant direct effects on nontraditional career choice while self concept, number of semesters of high school math, mother\u27s education, and mother\u27s employment had significant indirect effects on nontraditional career choice through math ability. The implications of these results for counselors assisting young women making career choices are discussed and recommendations for future research explored