Study I - Primary school students


Sample

Composed of 186 students, equally distributed by gender, whose data were collected through the application of the questionnaire in paper and pencil form during the hours of lessons by experts outside the school.


Reliability

Although none of the scales is particularly critical, many of them do not reach a Cronbach Alpha index of .70. This is to be read as an indicator of insufficient knowledge of the professions and therefore, consistently with the literature, as a sign of insufficient maturity on part of these students.


Jobs' knowledge

The Computer and Juridical areas are those that contain the jobs that most students say they do not know. Hospitality, Safety, Music, Health and Sports areas contain jobs known by almost all students. On the whole, there are few jobs that these students believe not to know about: the lack of an adequate perception of the real knowledge of the professions can be one of the reasons for the non-optimal level of internal consistency of some scales.



Study II - First grade secondary school students


Sample

Composed of 173 students, mostly males, whose data were collected through the application of the questionnaire in paper and pencil form during the hours of lessons by experts outside the school.

The sample consists of students of 5 first classes, 5 second classes and a single third class. This explains why the majority of the sample is aged between 11 and 12 years.


Reliability

All the scales demonstrate a good level of internal reliability with Cronbach's Alfa indices comprised between .72 and .87. These data indicate that students of this age have reached an adequate maturity to be able to read the elements that unite the professions of each area and to understand how much they are of interest to them.


Jobs' knowledge

Compared to the sample of primary school students, the number of those who declared that they do not know some professions is greater: this is to be read as an indicator of greater maturity and, as we have just seen, has a positive impact on the consistency index inside the scales.

The Computer and Juridical areas are those that contain the jobs that most students say they do not know. Hospitality, Safety, Music, Health, Transport and Sports areas contain professions known to almost all students.



Study III - Second grade secondary school students


Sample

Composed of 622 students, mainly males, whose data were collected through the administration of the questionnaire by computer during the hours of lessons by experts outside the school.

The sample consists of students from 5 different courses that well-represent the humanistic, scientific and technical areas.

COURSE PERCENTAGE
Linguistic High School 31.7% 
Scientific High school 26.0%
Technical Institute 42.3%

Reliability

All the scales demonstrate a good level of internal reliability with Cronbach's Alfa indices comprised between .74 and .89. It should be noted that the analyses differentiated by course (not shown here) indicate how the indices remain good but with a couple of exceptions: the Cronbach's Alfa index for the Economic area for the Scientific High school (.68) and Linguistic area for the Linguistic High school (.64) does not reach the threshold of .70. This, coherently with the scientific literature, is most probably due to the process of interests' focusing on specific jobs.


Jobs' knowledge

In this sample, very few students indicate that they do not know a job. The good indices described above suggest that knowledge is real and favors a more reliable assessment of their interests.