Intellectually Gifted Individuals' Career Choices and Work Satisfaction: A Descriptive Study

Roland S. Persson

32 citations0/0 files storedGifted and Talented International

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Career Development and Diversity Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior Education, Achievement, and Giftedness

Abstract

This study set out to investigate which career path a group of intellectually gifted individuals chose, if any. How did they actually like their work, and what were the reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their chosen career? In all, 287 Mensa members (216 men and 71 women) constituted the research group. Their average age was 34.4 years (SD = 8.8) and all had obtained IQ scores equal to or higher than the 98th percentile. The study was designed as a survey operationalized as an Internet-based questionnaire using the SPSS Dimensions software. A shortened version of the Work and Life Attitudes Survey (Warr, Cook & Wall, 1979) was included as part of the questionnaire. Quantitative data were analyzed as dispersions within the research group whereas qualitative data were content-analyzed using the so-called VSAIEEDC Model. Results show that participants tended to pursue careers mainly in Technology, Science and Social Work and to a lesser degree in Practical and Aesthetic work. Work satisfaction for all these fields was shown to be average. However, for individuals choosing to start their own company and, or assume leading managerial positions, satisfaction with work and career is very high. This article focuses on possible reasons for differences between subgroups in the sample and discusses a possible way forward to improve work satisfaction for intellectually gifted individuals at work, where needed.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 32 citations exist upstream.

References

1998Intellectual capital: The new wealth of organizations 1979Scales for the measurement of some work attitudes and aspects of psychological well‐being 1980The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history.1996The McDonaldization of Society 2016Stardom and Talent 1994International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent 1983The “McDonaldization” of Society 2009International Handbook on Giftedness

Cited by

2012Cultural Variation and Dominance in a Globalised Knowledge-Economy: Towards a Culture-Sensitive Research Paradigm in the Science of Giftedness 2017Occupational/Career Decision-Making Thought Processes of Adolescents of High Intellectual Ability 2018The Occupational/Career Decision-Making Processes of Intellectually Gifted Adolescents From Economically Disadvantaged Backgrounds: A Mixed Methods Perspective 2021How can wellbeing at work and sustainable employability of gifted workers be enhanced? A qualitative study from a capability approach perspective

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.