Parents’ occupation as correlate of students’ career aspiration in Public Secondary Schools in Ekpoma Metropolis

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between parents’ occupation and students’ career aspiration in public secondary schools in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State. The correlational research design was adopted for the study. A sample of 320 students was drawn for by simple random sampling technique from a population  of 3272 senior secondary school students in the 16 public schools in the local government. A self-designed inventory titled: Students Career and Parent Occupational Inventory (SCAPOI) was designed using Holland’s (1985) work on six (6) personality types namely: Realistic (R); Investigative (I); Social (S); Artistic (A); Enterprising (E); and Conventional personality type (C). The Kendall’s tau-b rank correlation technique was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 20). Results showed that there is a significant relationship between parents’ career/occupation and students’ career aspiration in public secondary schools in Ekpoma metropolis (r=.943, p<0.01). Sequel to findings, it was recommended that parents should cautiously avoid the tendency of pushing their children into pursuing those ‘wishful heights’ in their careers that they were unable to attain in other to make them accomplish their ‘own failings’.

Keywords: Career, Personality type, Career Aspiration, Career Choice, Student