Job Aspirations Research Articles

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Girls' Sexual, Marital, and Birth Expectations

This study examines potential racial and ethnic differences in early adolescent girls' desired and perceived normative role timing and the extent to which various socioeconomic and family factors and school and job aspirations might be linked with girls' role-timing expectations. Using a racially and ethnically diverse sample, (n = 574; 183 Hispanics, 177 Blacks, 93 Whites, and 70 Southeast Asians; M age = 12.9), results indicated that young women of different races and ethnicities saw their life course unfold in different sequences based on different timetables and independent of their socioeconomic circumstances. Hispanics desired rapid transitions at a young age, and Southeast Asians desired more gradual transitions at an older age. Blacks perceived the greatest likelihood of nonmarital childbearing for themselves, the longest normative interval between first sex and first birth, but they desired the shortest interval between first marriage and first birth. Within-race regressions revealed that girls' future aspirations were important for their expected role timing, even within the context of socioeconomic disadvantage (welfare receipt, low family income). Findings suggest the importance of culture-specific age norms for motivating role timing and role sequencing in young women's lives.

Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York.

Still the Promised City? addresses the question of why African-Americans have fared to so poorly in securing unskilled jobs in the postwar era and why new immigrants have done so well. Does the increase in immigration bear some responsibility for the failure of more blacks to rise, for their disappearance from many occupations and for their failure to establish a presence in business? The two most popular explanations for the condition of blacks invoke the decline of manufacturing in New York and other major American cities: one claims that this decline has closed off job opportunities for blacks that were available for ealier immigrants who lacked skills and education; the other emphasizes globalization - the movement of manufacturing jobs offshore to areas with lower labour costs. But Roger Waldinger shows that these explanations do not fit the facts. Instead, he points out that a previously overlooked factor - population change - and the rapid exodus of white New Yorkers created vacancies for minority workers up and down the job ladder. Ethnic succession generated openings both in declining industries, where the outward seepage of whites outpaced the rate of job erosion, and in growth industries, where whites poured out of bottom-level positions even as demand for low-level workers increased. But this process yielded few dividends for blacks, who saw their share of the many low-skilled jobs steadily decline. Instead, advantage went to the immigrants, who exploited these opportunities by expanding their economic base. Waldinger explains these disturbing facts by viewing employment as a queuing process, with the good jobs at the top of the job ladder and the poor ones at the bottom. As economic growth pulls the topmost ethnic group up the ladder, lower-ranking groups seize the chance to fill the niches left vacant. Immigrants, remembering conditions in the societies they just left, are eager to take up the lower-level jobs that natives will no longer do. By contrast, African-Americans, who came to a city a generation ago, have job aspirations similar to those of whites. But the niches they have carved out, primarily in the public sector, require skills that the least educated members of their community do not have. Black networks no longer provide connections to the lower-level jobs, and relative to the newcomers, employers find unskilled blacks to be much less satisfactory recruits. The result is that a certain number of well-educated blacks have good middle-class jobs, but many of the less educated have fallen back into an underclass. Grim as this analysis is, it points to a deeper understanding of America's most serious social problem and offers fresh approaches to attacking it.

The Development of Occupational Aspirations and Expectations among Inner-City Boys

The occupational aspirations and expectations of two populations of boys in grades 2, 4, 6, and 8 were examined in order (1) to describe what is unique about the development of job preferences among urban ghetto children who live in settings where many adult males are not well attached to the labor force and (2) to examine 6 reasons for any age- and population-dependent patterns there might be in job aspirations and job expectations. Findings show that boys tend to be more realistic about occupational aspirations and expectations the older they are; that from second grade on the occupational expectations of inner-city boys mirror existing race and class differences in adult job holdings; that the gap between occupational aspirations and expectations is greater for the ghetto boys and remains roughly constant in size across the grades examined; and that the lower occupational expectations of the inner-city boys are strongly related to their lower educational expectations, with these educational expectations being associated with fewer poor boys having a biological father at home and with more of these boys seeing obstacles to success in the local social setting. But, the lower occupational expectations of the ghetto boys are not due to having fewer positive role models or believing that schooling will not pay off for them in the future as it does for others.

The Development of Occupational Aspirations and Expectations among Inner-City Boys

The occupational aspirations and expectations of two populations of boys in grades 2, 4, 6, and 8 were examined in order (1) to describe what is unique about the development of job preferences among urban ghetto children who live in settings where many adult males are not well attached to the labor force and (2) to examine 6 reasons for any age- and population-dependent patterns there might be in job aspirations and job expectations. Findings show that boys tend to be more realistic about occupational aspirations and expectations the older they are; that from second grade on the occupational expectations of inner-city boys mirror existing race and class differences in adult job holdings; that the gap between occupational aspirations and expectations is greater for the ghetto boys and remains roughly constant in size across the grades examined; and that the lower occupational expectations of the inner-city boys are strongly related to their lower educational expectations, with these educational expectations being associated with fewer poor boys having a biological father at home and with more of these boys seeing obstacles to success in the local social setting. But, the lower occupational expectations of the ghetto boys are not due to having fewer positive role models or believing that schooling will not pay off for them in the future as it does for others.

Changes in job aspirations during physician training in Australia.

There is uncertainty regarding the effects of physician training on planned practice features of Australian physician trainees, for example plans for urban or rural, full-time or part-time and academic/research or purely clinical practice. These plans may differ between male and female trainees and between generalists and sub-specialists. To examine the changes in anticipated practice patterns over the course of advanced physician training. Longitudinal study of doctors in Australia who passed the Part I clinical examination of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1991, 1992 and 1993, followed annually up until 1995. Changes in future practice plans regarding full- or part-time work, rural or urban practice and pure clinical work or a mixture with research were examined among generalist and specialist trainees and among men and women. Statistical analysis included the calculation of chi square for trend statistics and intraclass correlation coefficients. At least one follow-up questionnaire was received form 80% of the 334 original respondents. The majority had been able to obtain their training job of choice. By the time of last follow-up, around 80% planned to practise in a capital city, indicating a shift during training from those who initially stated no preference. There was also a shift towards combining research with clinical practice and among women wishing to practise part-time only. Generalists were more likely to wish to practise outside a capital city than specialists. The training programme should be revised so that careers in rural and provincial centres are encouraged and so that it is sensitive to the needs for physicians to develop research capacity. Training and career opportunities should allow all candidates (particularly women) wishing part-time employment to achieve their full career potential.

Firefighters and Paramedics

1. Data were collected from an anonymous mail survey of over 2,000 paramedics and firefighters to determine the relationships among years of service and four occupational outcomes, including burnout. 2. Paramedics had poorer outcomes than firefighters. Job title, not percent of emergency service runs per se, significantly differentiated the groups with respect to burnout and job aspiration variables. 3. After adjusting for age, years of service correlated negatively with three measures of job aspirations: job satisfaction, work related morale, and career goal attainment in both groups. 4. If signs and symptoms of burnout occur throughout the worker's life cycle rather than with increasing years of experience, the findings have implications for both prevention and intervention strategies.

Applying the M‐92, A Self‐Knowledge Technique for Determining Job Aspirations and Expectations

The M‐92 technique is aimed at helping teenagers become aware of: (a) the relationships between certain classic determinants such as prestige, income, and job opportunities and their system of job aspirations and/or expectations; (b) the strong and weak points in their system of information about jobs; (c) the internal structure of their system of occupational representations; and (d) possible conflicts in values or discordancies between aspirations and expectations. From a theoretical standpoint the M‐92 draws directly on Coombs (1975) and Gottfredson (1981). Methodologically, it is an extension of the Hammond et al. (1988) Social Judgement Theory to the case of pair comparisons. Several concrete examples of the M‐92 in use are described.

Organizational Change and the Corporate Career: The Restructuring of Managers' Job Aspirations

For managers in large-scale organizations, careers have traditionally provided a set of organizing principles around which they have been able to structure both their private and professional lives. Through them, they have been able to experience a sense of security, stability, and order. Personal feelings of growth and advancement have been achieved through jobs which provide not only the opportunities for the completion of specific tasks but also a mean whereby longer-term personal goals can be achieved. Indeed, the combined promise of job security and advancement within corporate hierarchies-as linked with incremetal increases in authority, status, and pay-have constituted the major rewards of the modern managerial career. It has been largely through these mechanisms that large-scale organizations have been able to obtain the motivation and commitment of their managerial staff. During the 1980s, however, a variety of technological, organizational, and broader social changes have led many observers to suggest that the nature of corporate careers has fundamentally changed. In this paper we explore the attitudes of managers toward their careers in the context of restructuring processes which limit opportunities for hierarchical advancement and which also reduce job security. In particular, we discuss the ways in which those whose career expectations have been frustrated develop coping strategies. These can have important implications for their attitudes and behavior both within and beyond their employing organizations.

Effects of Interscholastic Athletic Participation on the Social, Educational, and Career Mobility of Hispanic Girls and Boys

This study examined the social, educational, and career mobility effects of interscholastic athletic participation on subsamples of Hispanic girls and boys drawn from the High School and Beyond Study (U.S. Department of Education), a 1980 national, longitudinal survey of 14,366 sophomores enrolled in 1,015 public and private schools across the United States. These same students were then contacted for follow-up data collection in their senior year (1982), and again two years (1984) and four years (1986) later. The dependent variables under investigation included popularity, involvement in extracurricular activities, grades, achievement test scores, dropout rates, college attendance, degree progress made, job success and job aspirations.

Home, school, and playroom: Training grounds for adult gender roles

Gender differences in children's play activities, preferred school subjects, and occupational goals were examined in relation to such parental variables as toy-giving and chore assignment. Subjects were 245 children in grades K, 3, 6, and 8. Subjects completed questionnaires before and after Christmas asking what gifts they wanted, asked for, received, and liked best. They also were asked to name their friends and play activities, favorite and least-liked school subjects, occupational aspirations, and chores at home. Children generally wanted, asked for, received, and most-liked gender-typical toys. They were less likely to receive requested gender-atypical toys. Children's preferred activities, job aspirations and assigned chores were along gender-typical lines. Girls preferred masculine toys and jobs more than boys preferred feminine ones. With increasing age, both girls and boys increasingly preferred masculine toys and male friends. No gender differences in favorite or least-liked school subjects were found. School subject preference was related to gender-typing of occupational choice for girls but not boys.

WHAT A WASTE! WOMEN IN THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Although they represent an increasing proportion of the UK workforce, the number of women occupying senior positions is still very low, and nowhere more so than in the National Health Service. Particular occupational groups within the NHS are researched here: nursing, medicine, pharmacy, clinical chemistry laboratories, and management. The findings reveal that women suffer disproportionately compared with men in their aspirations for the top jobs. Prevalent attitudes militate against this, such as stereotyping, opposition by management to women workers taking career breaks (which is an absolute necessity for some career‐minded mothers but to management suggests lack of commitment) and male‐dominated social concepts (”one of the boys”). It is concluded that NHS management must show greater flexibility in addressing the problems of women, their most valuable resource, before much needed recognition of women′s right to be treated fairly can be achieved.

Extrinsic job satisfaction and person-environment congruence

Holland's construct of congruence was investigated with job dissatisfaction among 792 men and 1077 women who were working in 1980. A congruence scale was developed based on job aspirations as freshmen in 1971, graduating major, and actual job in 1980. Patterns of relationships identified by median polishing indicated women working in Social environments were more dissatisfied with extrinsic aspects of their jobs than those working in other environments. More men than women were dissatisfied with income, fringe benefits, and opportunity for promotion. Furthermore, those at the highest level of congruence tended to be less dissatisfied than those at the lowest level of congruence.

Adolescent Stress and Management Strategies: Some Lessons for Schooling and Society

ABSTRACT The research discussed in the present paper, set out to find how a sample of Singaporean adolescents perceived and managed different sources of stress. The sample totalled 212 pre-university students with equal numbers of boys and girls, and a mean age of 17 years 5 months. The students attended a number of junior colleges in the republic, with the sample ethnicity reflecting national proportions. Measures of stress included Behaviour Profile, Life Events, School Stress Factors, Home-School Stress Conditions and Stress Symptoms. All measures were administered as questionnaires. The results showed that several features of Type A behaviour emerged and that school examinations, job aspirations, school work and homework were the principal stressors. Fear of the unexpected, exhaustion and lack of concentration were the most quoted stress symptoms. Science students appeared to be more stressed than arts students. Among the main management strategies employed by these adolescents at home, were listening to music, reading and exercise, while stress in school was managed through self control, self-sufficiency and sharing problems with peers. In the main, most students seemed to be able to cope by adapting to stressful situations as they arose at a particular time. Some of the more important implications of the above findings are discussed in the context of schooling in Singapore and in the wider context of society.

Occupational aspirations and attitudes to new technology

Following Cotgrove's (1982) thesis that there is a stable relationship between political and economic beliefs and attitudes to science and technology this paper sets out to test the hypothesis that attitudes to science and technology have direct implications for individuals' job aspirations. Though attitudes to technology were found to be multidimensional the data provide evidence to support Cotgrove's thesis for those aspiring to technological jobs. Such individuals possess attitudes entirely congruent with their aspirations. However, the pattern of attitudes and beliefs for those aspiring to welfare oriented work, principally females, was less clear cut, thus providing only equivocal support for Cotgrove's position.

Job Aspirations of Students in Institutions of Higher Learning in Nigeria

Job Aspirations of Students in Institutions of Higher Learning in Nigeria

The Importance of Economic Supply in Determining the Size and Quality of the Public Interest Bar

During a three-year panel study, the job aspirations of University of Denver law students changed so as to reduce the economic supply of public interest attorneys. Elementary economic theory suggests that this reduction in supply has an important impact on the size and quality of the public interest bar. Both demand and supply must be considered in attempts to increase the number and quality of public interest attorneys. Although this study does not attempt to explain the reasons for changes in students' job aspirations, reformers attempting to increase economic supply should not ignore the potential impact of legal education.

What's in a title? Personality, job aspirations, and the nontraditional woman

The vocational interests and job aspirations of traditional and nontraditional women in a single work environment were examined in a study of 258 paying-and-receiving tellers. Nontraditionality was operationally defined as choosing the honorific “Ms.” when given the opportunity to do so. Even with a variety of demographic characteristics statistically controlled, nontraditional women scored higher than traditional women on Vocational Preference Inventory Investigative and Enterprising scales. Nontraditional women also aspired to occupations employing a greater percentage of men, but no reliable difference in the prestige level of future aspirations was found. Implications for counseling and the study of career development are discussed.

"To Barter Their Souls for Gold": Female Clerks in Federal Government Offices, 1862-1890

I S. S. Kelty to John W. Noble, Feb. 18, 1892, file 1890-2208, Applications and Appointments Files, Appointments Division, Records of the Office of Secretary of the Interior, RG 48 (National Archives). Application files maintained by the Treasury Department in the four post-Civil War decades and by the Department of the Interior from 1879 to 1905 constitute the major sources for this essay. The Department of the Interior (which in the nineteenth century included the Patent Office, Pension Bureau, Census Office, General Land Office, and Bureau of Education, among others) and the Treasury Department were two of the largest federal agencies and the primary employers of women during this period. These application files contain personnel dossiers which document the lives and work histories of thousands of federal employees. Letters written by female applicants not only requested jobs, but also discussed family and financial problems and sometimes delineated the specific situations or crises that brought them into the federal labor market. In describing their qualifications, female job aspirants furnished information on their education and previous work experience, often revealing as well their family background, social status, and perception of what being a clerical worker entailed. This study is based on a reading of more than 2,000 files of such female applicants. The social and demographic profile of these women is based on statistical analysis of all women who applied for clerical jobs in the Treasury Department in 1862/1863 (the years when women first worked in Washington's bureaucracy) and 1870 and all women who applied for clerical jobs in the Interior Department in 1880 and 1890. In 1862/1863 there were 128 women who applied; in 1870 there were 101; in 1880 there were 598; and in 1890 there were 812. (These totals include 115 women who applied for jobs but who may not have been successful in their quest for work. When I examined these women separately I found that they did not differ significantly, in social or demographic characteristics, from the women who clearly did receive jobs.) To augment the data available in the federal application files, I also searched the 1880 District of Columbia manuscript population census schedules for the 598 women who applied for work in 1880. I successfully located 256 of them, and all information on household structure is based on an analysis of these 256 women. The following figures provide a rough indication of how many women clerked in all Washington federal offices in the years 1862/1863, 1870, 1880, and 1890, and indicate what proportion of the total number of female clerks I have accounted for in my analysis. There are only 176 women clerical workers listed in the entire 1863 official register of federal employees. See Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirteenth September 1863 (Washington, 1864). The 1870 census reported that 943 women were Officials and Employees of

Gender Differences in the Career Aspirations of Recent Cohorts of High School Seniors

The career aspirations of three cohorts of high school seniors are examined for evidence of changing patterns of sex role socialization. Several important changes occur in the distribution of male and female choices, most of which serve to reduce the overall level of gender dissimilarity. A multivariate analysis of aspirations for high status professional jobs highlights the importance of gender in the choice of career goals. The direct effects of gender are larger than those of the other independent variables (SES, class quartile, residential location and cohort), all of which interact with gender in their relationship to aspirations. In the largest of these interactions the relationship of gender to aspirations weakens across cohorts, suggesting an important change in the acceptance of occupational sex roles by high school seniors.

Educational and career aspirations of sixteen-year-olds Ken

Abstract Data obtained at the 16-year stage of the National Child Development Study provide information on the job expectations, aspirations and educational plans of some 12,000 young people in their final year of compulsory schooling. The interrelationships among these measures, and the associations with, for example, sex, social class and ability, are examined.