Subjective Criteria for the Preference of Profession and Work in Senior Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Abstract

Background. The present article addresses the criteria for choosing a profession and work among modern adolescents and young adults in the changing and transient world. It sets the ideals of professions that illusorily seem to be accessible, easy, well-paid, and interesting at the same time. Objective. The present study aims at identifying subjective criteria of the preference for occupation and work in senior adolescents and young adults and their relationship with personality traits, values, user activity, and subjective well-being. Study Participants. 172 subjects, 54 students of 8–11 grades at the age from 13 to 16 and 118 students of Moscow universities at the age from 17 to 23, including 103 males (59.9%) and 69 females (40.1%). Methods. The respondents fill in the scale of subjective criteria for job preference, the Ten Item Personality Measure, the Portrait Values Questionnaire and techniques for assessing subjective well-being and user activity. The answer the questions about the possibility and intention to combine several criteria of career and job choice. Results. The scale of the subjective criteria for job preference is a reliable, factor- and content-valid screening instrument assessing the importance of payment, interest, convenience, prospect, usefulness to others, ease, difficulty, and image in the work. In choosing a profession and job, both high school and college students focus on a wide range of criteria. Conscientiousness is associated with the preference for a well-paid, promising, and challenging work; openness to new experience is associated with the preference for interesting work. Orientation to the values of conformity and tradition is associated with the readiness to choose between different criteria, while the orientation to the values of achievement and power is associated with a wider range of subjective criteria, which the future job should correspond to. A higher level of positive emotions is associated with the preference for many criteria of job selection at the same time. A greater user activity is connected to the desire for easy work. Conclusions. In contemporary adolescents and young adults, a greater subjective well-being and the values of achievement and power are paradoxically associated with an unrealistically wide range of criteria of choosing a profession and job that are simultaneously important to them. This may further lead to some difficulties in searching for the job and disappointments in it.

Keywords

• professional identity
• choosing a profession
• personal traits
• values
• user activity
• senior adolescents
• young adulthood