Effect of Sex-Linked Vocational Information on Reported Occupational Choices of High School Juniors

Information about new occupational opportunities for women was read by 144 high school juniors, while 106 other juniors read information about opportunities in general. All students subsequently selected occupations from a list of 40 occupations that would be “most appropriate” for each of five male and five female students described in mock profiles. Two forms of profiles were used, differing only in gender designated for each student description. Differences were found in the “status” of occupations chosen for boy profiles versus girl profiles, based on the median amount of education and annual earnings of people having these occupations, with boys consistently receiving higher level occupations than girls. A three-way analysis of variance indicated that the difference between occupational status scores given to boys arid girls was significantly less in the group receiving information about opportunities for women (p < .01). It was suggested that it may be appropriate to consider vocational information as an important and alterable variable affecting occupational choice.