Cognitive structures in vocational development

Influence of selected variables on occupational attitudes and perceived occupational abilities of young adolescents

“…Cochran (1983) demonstrated that differentiated and integrated dimensions of cognitive schema impact vocational behavior. Positive relationships between cognitive vocational maturity and realistic, accurate, and effective career decisionmaking have been reported by Neimeyer, et al, 1985;Harris and Wallin, 1978;Westbrook and Parry-Hill, 1973;and Crites, 1969. Because the focus of the overall project was sex equity, of which this study was a part, it was of interest to inquire whether occupational attitudes and perceived occupational abilities of young adolescents were a function of gender. The following null hypothesis was tested in this study: No subset of the variables of family life situation, gender, self-esteem, socioeconomic status, or cognitive vocational complexity discriminates between young adolescents with high and low occupational attitudes and perceived occupational abilities.…”

“…As such, they can discriminate more effectively among available career options, which translates into more realistic and appropriate decision-making (Neimeyer, Nevill, Probert, & Fukuyama, 1985). Cochran (1983) demonstrated that differentiated and integrated dimensions of cognitive schema impact vocational behavior.…”

Structure and style in career decision making

“…Differentiation is understood as the relative number of different dimensions of judgment used by the person, with levels of differentiation enabling the person to construe events in a more multidimensional way (Tripodi & Bieri, 1964). Integration, by contrast, refers to the amount of interrelationship among the dimensions in a system; higher levels of integration permit more rapid (Cochran, 1977) and effective (Neimeyer, Nevill, Probert & Fukuyama, 1985) career decision making since integration reflects the overall degree of organization within the vocational construct system. In broad brushstrokes, the structural model of vocational development argues that vocational maturation should be marked by increasingly diverse perceptions of the world of work, perceptions that are nonetheless organized by an overall integration that enables the system's coherence and directs its evolution.…”

“…The first of these investigated the relationship between levels of vocational structure and career decision making skills, career exploration, and career planning, noting that more loosely organized systems were related to greater career exploration whereas more highly integrated systems were associated with more effective vocational decision making skills (Neimeyer, Nevill, Probert & Fukuyama, 1985). An extension of this work investigated the relationship between cognitive structure and both information processing and career decision-making self-efficacy (Nevill, Neimeyer, Probert & Fukuyama, 1986).…”

“…Operating at the lowest level of structural development, poorly integrated and differentiated systems lack the diversity (differentiation) and clarity (integration) that more highly developed systems would permit. Marked by a particularly loose organization among relatively few vocational constructs, these systems would have to depend on coopting the available decisions made for them by others (Neimeyer & Metzler, 1987;Neimeyer et al, 1985;Nevill, et al, 1986) or simply "shooting from the hip" since the system lacks sufficient organization to permit rapid and definitive decision making (Cochran, 1977;Nevill et al, 1986). Kelly (1955) defined loose constructs as those that lead to varying predictions, and previous work has already noted that lower levels of vocational integration permit greater career explora-tion (Nevill, et al, 1986), a strategy that is curtailed as the system develops a more tightly organized system of constructs that lead to more definitive occupational judgments.…”