Students’ Educational and Occupational Aspirations Predicted by Parents’ and Adolescents’ Characteristics

Abstract

Education plays a significant role in the future of young people. Education is considered as an essential tool that facilitates the decision making process on one’s future career. The objectives of this study were to examine whether there are gender differences on students’ educational and occupational aspirations as well as whether parents’ and young’s characteristics predicted students’ educational and occupational aspirations during their high school studies. The survey was completed by N=160 where (N=64, 40%) were male and (N=96, 60%) were female students studying in private and public high schools in Tirana and Elbasan known as main cities of Albania. Scale reliability was measured which showed that Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is .962. By using a T-test analysis, the results showed that males were not significantly different from females on educational and occupational aspirations (p=.88). Multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the best linear combination of gender, age, parents’ educational level, and parents’ occupational level for predicting students’ educational and occupational aspirations. Results showed that the combination of these variables did not significantly contribute to the prediction of students’ educational and occupational aspirations, F(4,142)=1.09, p=.36. Among all variables entered in the analysis, it was found that only parental educational level almost significantly contributed to the prediction where p=.056. It is recommended that more research need to be done to explore the impact of other family and child characteristics on students’ educational and occupational aspirations.