ROLES OF PARENTS’ EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, ENVIRONMENT AND GENDER ON THE TEENAGERS’ CAREER CHOICES

Abstract

The study investigated the roles of parents’ educational attainment, environment and gender on the teenagers’ career choices. Three alternate hypotheses were postulated and tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted survey design and Multi-stage sampling technique. Purposive sampling technique was used for selection of cities and secondary schools used for the study, while simple random sampling technique was used to select 400 teenagers from the 8 sampled secondary schools in the two Cities (Owerri and Aba). The participants comprised of 200 male and 200 female teenagers within the age bracket of 13 to 19 years, with mean age of 16.24 and standard deviation age of 1.43. A reliable and validated instrument developed by Mbagwu and Ajaegbu (2016) titled Teenagers’ Career Choice Scale (TCCS)) was used for data collection. Data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential (Chi-square) statistics. The results confirmed the hypotheses. Parents’ educational attainment has significant relationship with career choices of teenagers. Environment has significant relationship with career choices of teenagers. Gender has significant relationship with career choices of teenagers. The study recommends among others that parents should avoid making negative comments about different careers in the presence of their children. This is because teenagers are susceptible to comments parents make about good or bad professions as this could make them to lose interest in their dream careers.