پایبندی به ساختار RIASEC در رابطه با اکتشاف حرفه و سبک فرزندداری: ملاحضات طولی

We explored the “idiothetic” cognitive structure of RIASEC occupational percepts in a sample of Italian middle and high school students over a one year period, examining the possible bidirectional linkages between cognitive–vocational structure, involvement in career exploration activities, and exposure to authoritative parenting style. The focus was on the extent to which individuals’ thinking deviates from the normative RIASEC circumplex structure. Results indicated that there was less stability in the occupational percepts of middle school students over time, but both student groups showed change in the direction of greater adherence to circular structure. In addition, deviation from the circular model was related to subsequent career exploration, and initial levels of career exploration and parental authoritativeness were predictive of later circular structure, especially in middle school students. The results support the importance of examining individual variation in cognitive–vocational structure in relation to career development models and interventions.

Holland’s (1997) typology (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional, collectively referred to as RIASEC) is the predominant representation of vocational interests. At the group, or normative level, these are represented by a hexagon or circular ordering which captures the relations among the different types. This circular structure has been found to fit most US late adolescent and adult samples (Day and Rounds, 1998 and Tracey and Rounds, 1993). However, the circular structure of RIASEC types is less well established in international contexts and in children. Rounds and Tracey (1996) found that, in the majority of countries examined, fit to circular structure is not as pronounced as in US samples. Likewise, Tracey and Ward (1998) found that circular structure is less prevalent in children under 14. The tendency for circular structure to vary depending on culture and developmental level suggests that Holland-based scales may not have a common meaning across all cultures or age levels. It is also possible that individuals (regardless of age or culture) differ in the degree to which they adhere to circular structure. This issue relates to the traditional distinction between normative and ideographic representations of individual differences (Allport, 1937). A normative representation, which is exemplified by almost all of the current research in interests, focuses on finding the structure that fits for a group of individuals and then using this common structure to order individuals (e.g., one individual has high scores on R and I themes, while another individual has low scores on these scales). The assumption is that, since the circular structure fits for the group, it will also fit for each individual. By contrast, an idiographic approach focuses on the examination of how structures differ at the individual level. Each person may have a different way of representing or construing the items, rendering normative comparisons inappropriate and invalid. The advantage of the idiographic approach is that it takes account of the uniqueness of individuals, but it makes it difficult to make comparisons across individuals because the relevant structures may have little in common from person to person. A third approach, which might be termed “idiothetic” (Darcy, Lee, & Tracey, 2004), combines aspects of both the normative and idiographic approaches. It is an assessment of the extent to which individuals vary in terms of how well they fit the normative structure. Such an approach allows for the possibility of idiosyncratic structures yet also provides a basis for inter-individual comparisons relative to a common group structure. Given the limited current state of knowledge of the cultural, developmental, and normative aspects of RIASEC structure, we chose to examine the means by which this structure may evolve over time in adolescents outside of the US Normative examinations of RIASEC interests in the US have demonstrated that the circular structure does not hold well in younger children but that adherence to the normative circular model increases with age (Tracey & Ward, 1998). Given this pattern of results, we focused on how non-US students (Italian adolescents) construe the RIASEC items and whether their construal changes over time. We hypothesized that a similar positive relation between idiothetic structure and age would be evident in Italian students (i.e., as children age, their occupational perceptions better adhere to the RIASEC circular structure). This result would imply that children learn to construe their world in a manner more similar to the normative RIASEC structure and that this change, in part, reflects a developmental process that occurs across cultures. Tracey and Darcy (2002) found that US college students whose occupational thinking did not adhere to the normative circular structure reported more career indecision. Although these findings suggest that individual variation in RIASEC construal may have important career development implications, idiothetic structure, and its correlates, have received little attention in the literature and, to our knowledge, no research has been conducted on this topic outside of the US. The current study, therefore, is novel in its effort to extend study of how idiothetic representations of RIASEC structure vary across age and time in a country other than the US. In addition to tracking developmental change in circular structure, this study will explore theoretical variables that might underlie development of circular structure in adolescents’ perceptions of occupationally relevant activities. In particular, we included two variables that might be amenable to early intervention and that, on conceptual grounds, could be seen as operating jointly in the development of circular structure: authoritative parenting style and career exploratory behavior. Introduced into the developmental psychology literature by Baumrind, 1967 and Baumrind, 1971, authoritativeness refers to a parenting style characterized by high levels of responsiveness, control/discipline, and independence-granting behavior. Authoritative parents, in contrast to more indulgent, neglectful, or authoritarian parents, encourage and reinforce independent and exploratory behavior on the part of their children. At the same time, they expect their children to behave prosocially and to adhere to family rules, and they exert a good deal of control over these expectations. Research has found that parental authoritativeness is positively related to indicators of children’s academic, emotional, and social adjustment in US samples (e.g., Steinberg et al., 1992 and Steinberg et al., 1994). When studied independently, the components of authoritiveness (particularly the independence-granting and responsiveness dimensions) have also been found to be positively related to vocational identity development (Johnson, Buboltz, & Nichols, 1999) and career decidedness (Guerra & Braungart-Rieker, 1999) in college students, and to exploratory behavior in adolescents (Kracke, 1997 and Schmitt-Rodermund and Vondracek, 1999). The latter findings led us to posit that adolescents whose parents use an authoritative parenting style would be more likely to develop circular structure, in part because they have been encouraged to engage in more exploratory behavior during childhood and adolescence. We, therefore, expected that the presence of circular structure among adolescents would be promoted by (a) exposure to an authoritative parenting style and (b) involvement in career exploratory activities over a one year time span in separate samples of middle and high school students. More specifically, as shown in Fig. 1, we hypothesized that parental authoritativeness would lead both to greater amounts of circumplex fit (i.e., the extent to which the individual’s occupational percepts conform to the circular RIASEC structure; see path e) and career exploration (path f) because of parental support and encouragement of independent exploration. We also hypothesized that career exploration would lead to greater circumplex fit one year later (path d). That is, greater amounts of career exploration activity could stimulate thinking about occupational issues, eventuating in increased fit to the normative circular structure. Full-size image (28 K) Fig. 1. Initial model of the relations among the variables at time 1 and a year later at time 2. Figure options The relation of circumplex structure to career exploration was also viewed as reciprocal in nature, with greater fit to the circumplex leading to greater career exploration over time (path g). Theoretically, the more one construes RIASEC activities in a manner consistent with the normative model, the easier it would be to understand career information, and the more rewarding career exploratory activities would be (cf. Tracey & Darcy, 2002). We also assumed that each of the three variables would be fairly stable over time (paths a, b, and c), though we did hypothesize that stability of circumplex fit over one year (path a) would vary, depending upon the age of the individual. We expected that younger individuals would demonstrate less stability than older individuals (i.e., there would be more change in endorsing the normative structure over one year in younger students). This prediction fits with our developmental conception of individual construal. Finally, given that we were studying change over time, we made the common assumption that all of our exogenous variables (i.e., those at time 1) would be related to each other. Such an assumption enables the examination of change in relations over time. Hence the focus of the study was on the validity of the model represented in Fig. 1.