Identity in vocational development

Abstract

J. L. Holland's (1985, Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall) formulation of the new construct vocational identity did not deal with its relation to other developmental constructs in vocational psychology. The present study investigated the association of vocational identity with vocational development by administering the Vocational Identity Scale, the Medical Career Development Inventory, and the Ego Identity Scale to 143 first- and second-year college students with the same career aspiration. The results indicated that vocational identity related to both degree of vocational development and progress in egoidentity achievement. In particular, vocational identity associated most with the task of crystallizing tentative preferences and progressively less with the other tasks in the vocational development continuum. Interpretation of sex differences in the results led to recommendations for research on stability of vocational identity and the identity formation process. © 1985.