A Research Note on Attitudes to Work and Marriage of Six Hundred Adolescent Girls

Abstract

T N THE COURSE of an inquiry into the aims and ambitions of school| leavers carried out by a research groupl at Birkbeck College Department sof Psychology in the Spring of I956, assisted by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation, some I ,300 boys and girls from one of the Home Counties and a county in the West of England were studied. Their ages ranged from I4 to I7 years, and the majority were due to leave their Modern, Technical or Grammar school during the following year. The general aim of the study was to inquire into the attitudes of these boys and girls towards their future livfes, in particular towards work. Within this wide frame of reference a divfersity of techniques was employed to gather information as to the ambitions of these teenagers in terms of what they wanted to be, to do and to havfe. The present paper is concerned with data from two of the techniques used: (a) an autobiographical essay in which the children were asked to imagine that they were near the end of their lives and to write their life stories from the time that they left school, and (b) questionnaires directly concerned with occupational choices and expectations for the futurc This written work was supervfised in schools by the Research Assistants,