Determinants of Occupational Preferences in Portuguese and French High School Students

Abstract

The effect of nationality (Portuguese and French) on the impact of certain determinants of occupational preferences was studied in a population of high school students. Te comparison of the impacts was conducted holding the value of two differential variables, sex and parental socioeconomic status, constant. The methodology used was based on Social Judgment Theory. Forty-two pairs of professions were successively presented to 789 Portuguese students and 489 French students, who were asked to state which of the two they would least like to exercise in the future. The same 42 pairs were then shown to the subjects again with the instruction to indicate which of the two had the greatest prestige, the highest salary, or was the most feminine.... Preference judgments and judgments on prestige, salary, femininity, and so forth, were assessed for point-to-point correspondence. Results revealed that the effect of nationality was significant in four of the nine determinants investigated for impact salary, promotion prestige, and intellectual manual. Portuguese students, more than French students, tend to prefer jobs that they judge to offer the highest income, the highest possibilities of promotion, those that are judged to be the most prestigious and the most manual. Regardless of population, female subjects, more than male subjects, show a tendency to prefer professions judged to be most feminine and to offer more chances for contacts. Male subjects prefer those jobs that they believe to be the best paid. Overall, high socioeconomic status (SES) subjects prefer occupations that they judge to have more prestige and to be more difficult to enter in the nature and the duration of studies.