Are Realistic Types Really Less Career Mature?: Year 10 Differences in Career Maturity between Holland's Work Personality Types

Abstract

The Career Development Inventory and Holland's Self-Directed Search were administered to 89 Year 10 students. There were no significant differences in attitudinal career maturity between Holland's work personality types, but differences in cognitive career maturity were significant, and closely replicated the patterning obtained by Jones, Hansen and Putnam (1976), in which Investigative types had most career maturity and Realistic types had least. However, when educational achievement was used as a covariate in the relationship of cognitive career maturity and Holland type, there were no longer significant differences. A discussion is made of whether Realistic types are really less career mature, or whether measures of career maturity are inappropriate for Realistic types due to the confounding of other variables.