Extracurricular activities and career indecision : a look at the mediating effect of vocational exploration

This study examined whether vocational exploration mediated the association between partici-pation in extracurricular activities and career indecision among high school students. A total of312 students were surveyed over three waves of data collection (Secondary 3 to Secondary 5).Participation in extracurricular activities (number and types), vocational exploration (self andenvironment), and career indecision (undecidedness, self-unclarity, and career choice unim-portance) were self-reported. Results revealed that participation in a higher number of extra-curricular activities predicted an increase in vocational exploration the following year. Moreover,vocational exploration predicted a decrease in career indecision the year after that. However, thepredictive association between participation in extracurricular activities and career indecisionwas not mediated by vocational exploration. Examination of the types of activities (sports; artsand sociocultural activities; academic-related committees, volunteering, and civic activities) alsoshowed that participation in arts and sociocultural activities predicted an increase in vocationalexploration, whereas participation in academic-related committees, volunteering, and civic ac-tivities predicted a decrease in career indecision by the end of the high school years. These resultssuggest that extracurricular activities could be promoted by career counselors as an additionalstrategy for supporting students in their exploration of the world of work