Interest patterns and retention and rejection of vocational choice

Abstract

The Strong Vocational Interest Blanks of 2 groups were compared: (1) a group of 30 male college students who listed "high school teacher" as the vocational objective at the beginning of counseling and who retained this objective at the conclusion of counseling; and, (2) a group of 30 male college students who originally listed the same objective but who rejected it in favor of another at the conclusion of counseling. It was found that only primary interest patterns are significant discriminators at the 5% level of confidence, and that certain group patterns predicted the retaining or rejecting of the "high school teacher" objective. There was no difference in the masculinity-femininity scores but those who rejected the objective during counseling scored 5 points higher on the OL scale than those who retained the objective. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)