Career and life style aspirations of gifted Canadian secondary school females.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to obtain a description of the career and lifestyle expectations of a sample of intellectually gifted female secondary school students in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The subjects were 140 gifted female students, selected through their school principals to attend a conference on career awareness. Data were obtained from four sources: (1) Career choices, as provided on conference registration materials; (2) Futures' Diary, a questionnaire designed to gain a description of subject expectations for work and lifestyle patterns at age thirty; (3) Family Work Patterns, a questionnaire designed to obtain a description of current work and family life patterns; and (4) Career Factor Checklist, an instrument developed to assess the relative influence of 28 factors affecting career decision making and subject awareness of them. The factors are divided into six sub scales: familial, societal, individual, socioeconomic, situational, and psychosocial emotional. Data analysis was done using descriptive measures of frequency distribution, range and percentage. In career choice, subjects selected 28 careers, with 74.96% selecting professional careers, and 52.27% selecting male-dominated professions. The Futures' Diary questionnaire indicated that 74% of subjects expected to combine career and family, with less than 2% expecting to be personally responsible for their children's home day care. Subjects expected a relatively affluent lifestyle that included home ownership (83.57%) and international travel (52.86%). Divorce was foreseen by fewer than 1% of subjects, and egalitarian work and family patterns were expected. These findings were contrasted with their current experience of more traditional patterns, as shown in the Family Work Patterns questionnaire. The Career Factor Checklist showed that subjects perceived the strongest effect on their career choices to come from individual factors, including self-expectancies, abilities, interests, need to achieve, and attitudes. Situational chance factors were seen to have the least effect These findings were discussed relative to current research on adolescence and current career and family patterns. Recommendations for further research and counseling were given.