Predicting career interests from problem-solving style with high school students

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between problem-solving style as measured by VIEW: An Assessment of Problem-solving Style and career interests or preferences in high school students as measured by the Kuder Career Search with Person Match. Three-hundred forty-two eighth through eleventh grade junior and senior high school students from a suburban high school participated in this study. There were approximately equal numbers of boys and girls. The majority of students were of Asian and Hispanic ethnicities, with smaller numbers of Caucasian and African-American, and other ethnic backgrounds. Students completed all measures on-line during three of their English class sessions as part of the school career development guidance program. VIEW yields information about six individual problem-solving styles along three dimensions: Orientation to Change (Explorer vs. Developer), Manner of Processing (External vs. Internal), and Ways of deciding (Person-oriented vs. Task-oriented). The Kuder Career Search with Person Match provides scores according to 16 career interest categories as well as Holland\u27s RIASEC model. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance revealed that significant differences were found between the Explorers and the Developers and between the Person-oriented decision-makers and Task-oriented decision-makers across the Six Kuder career clusters. Explorers displayed a greater preference for the Kuder Arts/Communication (Artistic) career cluster. Those who had a Person-oriented decision-making style had a greater preference for the Kuder Arts/Communication (Artistic) career cluster and the Kuder Social/Personal Services (Social) career cluster, while those who had a Task-oriented decision-making style had a greater preference for the Kuder Outdoor/Mechanical (Realistic) career cluster and the Kuder Science/Technology (Investigative) career cluster. Although the multivariate analysis of variance revealed that there were no statistically significant differences between the Internals and Externals, the univariate analysis found that Externals displayed a greater preference for the Kuder Sales/Management (Enterprising) career cluster. The findings are congruent with the research related to personality, creative problem-solving, and career theories and support the position that there is a relationship between one\u27s problem-solving style and vocational interest. Implications and limitations of these results were discussed. Recommendations for future research were made