Abstract
Grounding on Holland’s RIASEC model of vocational interests and the respective assumptions on person-environment fit (congruence), this paper focuses on how congruence is related to study outcomes, especially students’ persistence, performance, and satisfaction. The paper distinguishes the measure of congruence with respect to social congruence (SOC) (interest fit with the study mates) and aspirational congruence (ASP) (interest fit with the occupation aspired) and also distinguishes the effects of congruence for gender and six different study areas including Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), medicine, economics, education, and languages. The paper analyses 10,226 university freshmen of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and follows them longitudinally with respect to their study outcomes. The results show that students’ persistence was more related to SOC than to ASP, especially for male students. Furthermore, SOC was particularly important for students in STEM areas. Regarding performance, however, ASP was more important. Here, we notably found correlations for STEM subjects with a balanced proportion of female students. Regarding satisfaction, mainly marginal correlations could be found. The results indicate conceptual differences between social and aspirational congruence as well as specific effects for gender and study area. While research might take this into account by specifically developing their models for different study areas, career counseling may reflect on the different significance of the interest-based person-environment fit for different study areas. Initiatives for raising young people’s participation in STEM should therefore specifically focus on students that have high chances to develop interest profiles that are congruent to STEM rather than students who show profiles which already indicate a low congruence.
Highlights
Choosing an academic major and a corresponding occupation are important decisions determining students’ further course of life (Elder, 2002)
Person-environment fit (P-E fit) theories suggest that career-related choices are promising if they are based on individual traits (Su et al, 2015) such as vocational interests as defined by Holland (1997)
The data set for this study comes from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; Blossfeld et al, 2011; see acknowledgments) and its starting cohort 5 that focuses on first year students (SC5:14:0.0)
Summary
Choosing an academic major and a corresponding occupation are important decisions determining students’ further course of life (Elder, 2002). Person-environment fit (P-E fit) theories suggest that career-related choices are promising if they are based on individual traits (Su et al, 2015) such as vocational interests as defined by Holland (1997). Being one of the most prominent P-E fit approaches (Ott-Holland et al, 2013; Juntunen et al, 2019), Holland’s (1997) RIASEC model claims that students who choose an environment that is congruent to their interests should be satisfied, perform well, and persist. Incongruent choices, on the other hand, are supposed to lead to students dropping out, which causes personal costs such as a lower self-esteem (Hoeschler and Backes-Gellner, 2017) or forgone earnings (Schneider and Yin, 2011) as well as societal costs such as resources invested in vain at institutions of higher education, a lack of skilled professionals, or the loss of tax revenues (Sarcletti and Müller, 2011; Schneider and Yin, 2011; Neugebauer et al, 2019). Research looks for preventive measures to avoid dropouts or detours, and interest congruence is considered a decisive predictor
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
