Career stages and attitudes to skills development process in Poland

Abstract

There is an undeniable need for the continuous improvement of skills and competences in the era of the knowledge-based economy. The necessity of lifelong learning activities is included in the strategic European documents. The degree of achievement of the objectives in the field of adult education varies substantially among the countries of the European Union. The situation in Poland as compared to other countries is unfavorable. This paper deals with the subject of attitudes towards the skills development process of the Polish labor force. The analyses are carried out on the basis of the microdata provided by a Polish nationwide survey on human capital conducted in 2013. According to the Super's theory some career stages combined with age are considered: the exploration, the establishment and the maintenance. A hypothesis is verified that the educational patterns are different at various stages of the career development. As the dataset contains nominal, ordinal and interval variables, some specific statistical methods are applied to identify the associations.