Effects of Gender and Academic-Risk Behavior on the Career Maturity of Rural Youth

Abstract

We exd-minedthe impact ofgender and academic-risk behavior on the career maturity attitudes and competence of rural adolescents. Using the Career Maturity Inventory (Crites, 1978), a two-waymultivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)found significant main effects for gender and academic-risk status on affective career maturity. A separate two-way MANOVAfocusing on career maturity competence found significant main effects for academic-risk status. The career development problems of rural adolescents identified as academically at-risk highlight a need for targeted secondary career education and vocationalpreparationprograms. However, to maximize theeffectiveness ofvocational programsfor these rural youth, greater attention must bepaid to the career development issues they experience. Career maturity has been studied extensively over the past 3 decades and is an important construct in career development theory (Crites, 1978). Career development! self-concept theory, as proposed by Super (1990), de­ scribes five stages of development including growth (child­ hood), exploration (adolescence), establishment (young adulthood), maintenance, and withdrawal. Super postu­ lated that, typically, certain vocational tasks are accom­ plished during each of these distinct stages according to identifiable and predictable sequences. Simply defined, career maturity provides a means of measuring the degree of affective and cognitive career development an indi­ vidual has attained. Career maturity describes one's ability to successfully cope with vocational development tasks (e.g., crystallizing, specifying, and implementing career choice) that are encountered across the developmental continuum from explorationstage through withdrawal. As a construct, it represents a repertoire of coping behaviors and one's readiness to employ these behaviors toward career-related events encountered at various life stages. However, contrary to the impressions created by some writers, [career maturity] does not increase monotonically [having a direct correspondence to age], and it is not a unitary trait (Super, 1990, p. 207). Extensive research has been conducted on the career maturity construct. However, critics maintain that since career development theory was originally based on a ho­ mogeneous group of White, middle-class adolescent males who experienced continuous vocational development, the construct is of limited generalizability (LoCascio, 1974; Phillips, Strohmer, Berthaume, & O'Leary, 1983). Super

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