The correlation between career exploration and career choice of African-American inner-city middle school students

• Main Author: Mency, Janice F.R.
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center 1994
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/3416; http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4939&context=dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if a career education module would enhance the career choices of African-American middle school inner-city students. The students were randomly selected from a school that met all of the fore-mentioned criteria. These students were then divided into two groups (experimental and control). The students were administered the Ohio Career Interest Survey (OCIS) on two separate occasions. Between the two administrations, one group (the experimental group) received a career education module for twelve weeks. The other group (control group) received no type of career education intervention. After collecting the data, the (132) one-hundred thirty-two items of the Ohio Career Interest Inventory were placed into (12) twelve scales as set forth by the guidelines of the inventory for further analyses and testing of the hypotheses. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean pre and post-test scores of the experimental and control groups. To further explain, the experimental group's mean post-test scores were significantly higher than the control group's mean post-test scores. This difference was found on all (12) twelve of the scales. Because of these findings, the null hypotheses were rejected. There was a .05 level of statistical significance on each of the scales. These results indicated that the experimental group's scores increased significantly after receiving the career education module. This further indicated that the students' interest in the careers on each scale increased.