Work Values of College Bound and Other High School Students

Abstract

This study identified the salient work values of college bound and noncollege bound high school students from their perceptions of occupations. Multidimensional scaling analyses of the students' judgments about the similarity of occupations extracted three factors in the college bound sample and seven in the noncollege bound sample. The same blue collar dimension appeared in both samples; additional dimensions in the noncollege bound sample were fragments of the broader dimensions in the college bound sample. These results indicate that the perceptions were more differentiated for the noncollege bound students than for the other students, but did not reflect different aspects of occupations, implying that the same work values were salient for both groups.