Occupational Aspiration of Undergraduate Agricultural Students of Kerala Agricultural University- A Multidimensional Analysis

The study titled ‘Occupational aspiration of undergraduate agricultural students of Kerala Agricultural University- A multidimensional analysis’ was undertaken during 2017 - 19. The objectives of the study was to study and compare the occupational aspirations of the male and female undergraduate students of agriculture and also to categorise and compare the male and female undergraduate agricultural students based on the level of occupational aspiration. The study analyses both idealistic and realistic occupational aspirations of the undergraduate agricultural students by considering the concept of long and short range for goal period expression. The study also categorises the students based on their level of occupational aspiration by following the procedure adopted by National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) and Ajit [1] in developing level of aspiration scale. The occupational prestige rating scale establishes level of occupational prestige as viewed in India as well as determines the weighted score for each of the occupation. The sample of the study comprised of 120 third year and final year students i.e., 60 students from College of Agriculture (COA), Vellayani, 35 students from College of Horticulture (COH), Vellanikkara and 25 students from College of Agriculture (COAP), Padannakkad were selected based on proportionate random sampling method. The results on occupational aspiration of the students revealed that more than half (56.65%) of the undergraduate students in agriculture belonged to the category of high level of occupational aspiration. Getting the state/ central government job (67.5%) and entering into administrative sector jobs through PSC’s (48.3%) were the realistic occupational aspirations of majority of the students. Becoming Agricultural scientist in central/ state government (45.85%) and cracking civil services (36.66%) were the idealistic occupational aspirations of the majority of the students. It was also observed that irrespective of the gender and college of study, the students’ level of occupational aspirations remained same.

Moderating effect of gender on the association between occupational Aspiration and carrier maturity

The objective of the present empirical piece of research work is to examine the moderation effect of gender on the relationship between occupational aspiration and career maturity. Following the stratified random sampling technique 1000 students were drawn from different schools at Durg city, to serve as participants in the present research work. Career maturity was measured by Career Maturity Inventory (Gupta, 1989). Occupational aspiration was measured by Grewal (1975). Moderation effect was worked out through hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Result of the study indicated that, gender was significant moderator on the relationship between occupational aspiration and career maturity. It is concluded that there is sufficient empirical and statistical evidence of the moderation effect of gender on the relationship between relationship between occupational aspiration and career maturity.

Reading Habits, Socioeconomic Conditions, Occupational Aspiration and Academic Achievement in Vietnamese Junior High School Students

Reading practices play an important role in the learning process of students. Especially in a fast-changing world where knowledge about nature and society is in a constant state of flux, book reading helps students foster skills such as thinking, valuing, adaptability and creativity for sustainable development. This research study used a dataset of 1676 observations of junior high school students from Northern Vietnam to explore students’ academic achievement and its association with their reading passion, family socio economic condition, parental education and occupational aspiration. The empirical results show that higher grades in STEM-related subjects are predicted by reading interest (βReadbook = 0.425, p < 0.0001), with students who love reading books achieve higher score than those who take no interest in books. Remarkably, the education level of the mother strongly enhances academic performance, with β = 0.721 (p < 0.0001) in cases of mother having a university diploma or higher. Students coming from wealthy families are more likely to buy books whereas borrowing from the library is the main source of books for students who grow up in not-rich families. However, even among wealthy families, investment into buying books still rely more on personal interest, despite the aforementioned educational benefits of book reading, as evidenced by an over 7 percentage point disparity between the likelihood of purchasing books among wealthy-family students who took an interest in reading (45%) versus students of the same background who did not like to read (38.7%). The results present implications for education policy making with a vision towards United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education.

Development and Validation of the Subjective Occupational Aspiration Scale Using a Rasch Model Approach

This study proposes and measures a new construct, subjective occupational aspiration, that refers to individuals’ preferences for selected aspects of occupations—economic rewards, authority, freedom, education required, and ability required—that, collectively, support the expression of those occupations. Using a four-step approach to constructing psychometric instruments based on the Rasch model, this study developed and validated the Subjective Occupational Aspiration Scale (SOAS). The SOAS consists of 24 4-point Likert-type items. Both infit and outfit statistics indicated that the Rasch model predicted both items and persons within a reasonable error bound, validating all initial 24 items of the SOAS. However, two sets of items showed reversed difficulties. The final instrument that reflects the corrected difficulty order of items is provided. Suggestions and implications for using the SOAS in practice are also discussed.