Career counselling and its knowledge among high school students in Pakistan

Abstract

Background: The objective of the study was to find out the knowledge of career counselling among High School Students in Pakistan, their attitude towards attaining this knowledge and role of counsellors in order to get the right decision.Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted from October to November 2016in two private institutes of Karachi. It included 500 students enrolled in a single high school for A-level and intermediate study program for session year 2016-2017. A Structured questionnaire was developed and adapted from previous studies. Data entry and analysis was done using SPSS 20. Frequencies, percentages, and P-values were reported for the categorical variables, while mean and standard deviation for Age. The variables were cross tabulated against Knowledge to find out their associations. A P-value of 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: Out of 500 respondents, 54% were females. Most of the students were in the age group of 17-19 years. Most of the students took Science as a major subject, while many declared it was their first attempt for higher school examination. 32.6% students had an aim of becoming Engineer while 29.8% wanted to be doctors. Most of these made this choice based on their personal interest. 54.8% of students had knowledge of career counselling. On applying chi square tests, availability of career counsellor and seminar attendance was found to be significantly associated with knowledge. Many of the students found counselling to be very important and they believed that there is a need of counsellor in every school. Most of them found their parents to be the most helpful in choosing their career.Conclusions: It is concluded that most high school students possess appropriate knowledge, positive attitude but lack of proper practices. Students consider career counselling to be really important and they are really concerned in acquiring appropriate guidance. Parents seemed to play an influential role in their choices. It is evident that very few schools provide with career counselling session and there is no concept of presence of career counsellors in any school of Pakistan.