Children’s occupational knowledge: a conceptual framework and measure

Abstract

We describe a conceptual framework for and introduce a measure to examine children’s knowledge about occupations and the world of work. The framework comprises three aspects of occupational knowledge: identifying occupations from pictures (occupational picture naming), naming and explaining occupations (occupational vocabulary), and explaining the essence of work (occupational comprehension). Scale development included exploratory and confirmatory phases. The Cronbach alpha for the subscales ranged between 0.70 and 0.90. Age differences on scales were compared between 3- and 8-year-old children (N = 101). The older children demonstrated greater occupational knowledge than the youngest in all aspects. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.