Editorial Board

A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management

Relationship between Self Knowledge and Career Knowledge of Students for Career Decision

Author

Shahinshah Babar Khan Department of Education International Islamic University Islamabad-Pakistan

Dr. Asad Abbas Rizvi Department of Education International Islamic University Islamabad-Pakistan

N.B Jumani Department of Education International Islamic University Islamabad-Pakistan

Abstract

Researchers aimed to study the correlation of self-knowledge and career knowledge among students in Pakistan .Researchers also found male and female students of different subject groups differ in terms of career decisions. It was a co-relational study and survey method was used to find the relationship and differences. A total of 460 higher secondary level students were the sample for the present study. Data was collected through self developed questionnaires to find the relationship between self-knowledge and career knowledge of the students. Pearson “r” was practiced for revealing relationship between one’s knowledge about him/her and career related information/knowledge. One Way ANOVA was used to reveal the difference among male and female students towards career decision. The study found a strong positive relationship between one’s self knowledge and career related information/knowledge. It was also resulted that students of different subjects groups applied different patterns while making career decisions.

Keywords:Self-Knowledge, Career-Knowledge, Career Decision.

Introduction

1.1 Background

Defining career is not so simple, even in the 21st century; word career has different meanings and scope. Generally, it is considered as the selection of majors at school level while keeping in view the use of these majors at work place. It is the connection of work responsibilities an individual do at the work place and the role in daily life (UNESCO, 2002). At present, the working nature has been changed and it is changing at a rapid speed. It is believed that today’s employees to be extra imaginative and artistic. They must have confidence in their own abilities and to be motivated to enhance their skills in their field of work (Puczynska, 2014). Self-Knowledge is to know about the whole of self, means to know about interests, abilities, choices and future. Self-Knowledge enable the students to choose the right subjects at school level and then take steps to excel in the selected field. Self-Knowledge helps to understand the personality type and then search for the careers. Having knowledge about the accessible careers is known as career knowledge. Career-knowledge can be gained through different methods, may be from parents or brothers/sisters, through media and may be from peers and teachers. Career-Knowledge enables the students to choose the best while keeping in view the future aspects. Taking decision for a the career is a multifaceted process although some people take it easily while most of the people feel problems about taking decision for career (Gati, Krausz and Osipow, 1996). UNESCO (2002) describes that career decision can be taken at any stage of life as it is a continuing process. At present, making decisions about careers are no longer the only distinct choice made at some point whereas now people have options to have more than one position in different areas of employment (Argyropoulou & Kaliris, 2018). While entering from school to world of work, students have to make decisions about their career (Saks, 2015). Age of students at higher secondary level is known as young adulthood where students have to take decisions about life and career as majority of the students enter into the world of work (Mortimer, Kim, Staff & Vuolo, 2016).

1.2 Choosing Academics among Pakistani Students

At higher secondary level, students are supposed to select those majors which define their future career. At this point, the selected subjects define the future career of the students. In Pakistan, at this level, there is no mechanism to check the interests of the students and provision of some kind of help for career decision making. Generally, students select those subjects which are taken by their elder brothers/sisters or as selected by their peer. The students do not know about their self, nor guided from the institution. The students who have high score in matriculation adopt science stream while who have low score join arts stream without knowing the scope of the subjects, because students have no knowledge of their self nor they have information about the available careers, the only reason behind this is the missing aspect of guidance and counseling for selection of subjects and career counseling at higher secondary level.

1.3 Objective of the Present Study

The focus of the study was: 
1-	 To discover the bond between one’s self that is known as knowledge and the career related information that is career- knowledge.
2-	To look at the difference in mean scores of the female and male students between the subject groups towards career decision

2. Literature

2.1 Self-Knowledge

Transition from secondary to higher secondary level brings many hopes and challenges for the young students. At this stage, students start to think about their future career and set their life goals. Career is some kind of work that some individual will opt in future. An individual who knows his/her strengths and weaknesses is considered more capable to select career in accordance with his/her interests. Mbetse (2002) explain self knowledge as the ability to understand the self potential and attitude. Gubler, Arnold and Coombs (2014) states that world of work in 21st century is volatile, apprehensive and non-linear. Kulpa (2014) is of the opinion that to work in the present market, workers may be unique in their working patterns and have exploratory mind, and workers have a confidence in their working and this is not enough, they are required to extend their skillfulness for survival in the changing world

2.2 Career-Knowledge

Currently, hundreds of careers are available to choose and knowledge about these careers required awareness and knowledge of the field. Information is the thing that differentiates the successful people from failed people and the people who have career information succeed in the current era (Barker & Kellen 1998). Barker and Kellen (1998) suppose that this is career information that differentiates the successful people from the failed people. Albro and Turner (2019) illustrated the following six principles that can be helpful for the young students to know their career interests, enhance their career knowledge, look into future opportunities and while working on these can achieve the career goals:

1-	Generate such an atmosphere that leads them towards their choice for career. 
2-	Construct Career Knowledge through Discussion.
3-	Involve Community Speakers to tell their occupations, skills required and responsibilities.
4-	Give confidence to students to discuss their career choices 
5-	Offer chances to students to search careers.
6-	Provide space to students to contribute their learning about Careers.

2.3 Self-knowledge, Career Knowledge and Career Decision

The students who know about self interests and market situation can choose more suitable career that give them confidence and more opportunities to grow in the field (Patton & McMahon 2006). Majority of the young students are conscious about career decision making and have concerns about future career (Park, Kim, Kwon & Lee, 2018). Also there is a direct relationship between the two, that increment in career related information/knowledge affect the decisions regarding career (Abdullah, Ghazali, Hussin & Talib, 2018).

Method

3.1 Population and Sample

For the current study, 2309 students were the population. From population, 460 higher secondary level students were selected as sample through Multi Stage Sampling Technique. At first stage, through universal sampling technique, all the higher secondary schools of Federal Directorate of Education were selected which were 43 in number. At second stage, a sample of 460 students was selected rough proportional stratified random sampling technique. Subject Strata were identified and 20 % male and 20 % female students from each stratum were selected as sample as Gay (2009) has proposed that if the population size is 1500, 20 % sample is enough for such type of studies.

Table No.1: Table of Sample

Gender	Pre-Engineering	Humanities	Pre-Medical	G. Science	Total
Girls	09	275	17	65	366
Boys	18	39	10	27	94

Table No.1 provides the number of students (boys and girls) selected as sample from each subject group

3.2 Research Instruments

Two different self developed questionnaire based on Likert scale (five-point) were applied for computing one’s knowledge and career knowledge of the participants. Five options were offered (strongly agree to strongly disagree) for every statement to reveal the self knowledge and career knowledge of students regarding decision making

3.3 Data Collection and Analysis

To collect data, questionnaires were distributed to 460 students and 456 questionnaires were received back from the sample students. Pearson “r” was applied to reveal the association of one’s knowledge and career knowledge. One Way ANOVA was used to reveal the difference in mean scores towards career decision of the students (boys and girls),

Table No.2:

Descriptive Statistics

Variable	Mean	Std. Deviation	N
CAREER KNOWLEDGE	107.07	6.71	456
SELF KNOWLEDGE	85.21	5.38	456

Table 2 shows that mean score for one’s knowledge and career related awareness is 85.21 and 107.07 respectively while standard deviation for one’s knowledge and career related awareness is 5.38 and 6.71 respectively

Table No.3: Correlations of Career Information and One’s Knowledge

		CAREER KNOWLEDGE	SELF   KNOWLEDGE
CAREER KNOWLEDGE	Pearson Correlation	1	.97
	Sig		.00
	Sum of Squares and Cross-products	20524.61	16110.83
	Covariance	45.10	35.40
	N	456	456
SELF KNOWLEDGE	Pearson Correlation	.97	1
	Sig. (2-tailed)	.000
	Sum of Squares and Cross-products	16110.83	13187.50
	Covariance	35.40	28.98
	N	456	456

Table 3 reveals that a positive strong connection exists between one’s knowledge and career knowledge for decision making as the correlation value between one’s knowledge and career knowledge was .98 (r=0.98, n=456). High relationship is evident of multicollinearity between self-knowledge and career knowledge.

Table No. 4: Test of Homogeneity of Variance for Male Students

Levene Statistics	df1	df2	Sig
.109	3	90	.95

Table No.4 provides the sig value (.95) that is larger than .05; it means homogeneity assumption has been was carried out.

ONE WAY ANOVA

Table No. 5: Total Career Decision

	Sum of Squares	Df	Mean Square	F	Sig
Between Groups	466.521	3	155.50	3.49	.01
Within Groups	4006.085	90	44.51
Total	4472.606	93

In Table 5, sig value is .01 that is less than .05; this shows that significant difference occurs in the mean scores of career decision making for male students. To reveal the difference among male students of career decision making, Post Hoc Tucky Test was applied.

Table No.6: Multiple Comparisons

(I) Group	(J) Group	Mean Difference (I-J)	Std. Error	Sig
Pre-Engineering	Pre-Medical	.22	2.63	1.00
	Humanities	-.41	1.90	.99
	Gen. Science	-5.11	2.03	.06
Pre-Medical	Pre-Engineering	-.22	2.63	1.00
	Humanities	-.64	2.36	.99
	Gen. Science	-5.33	2.46	.14
Humanities	Pre-Engineering	.41	1.90	.99
	Pre-Medical	.64	2.36	.99
	Gen. Science	-4.69	1.67	.03
Gen. Science	Pre-Engineering	5.11	2.03	.06
	Pre-Medical	5.33	2.46	.14
	Humanities	4.69	1.67	.03

Table No. 6 shows that at the .05 significant level, there was significant difference (Sig=.03) between male students of two subject groups (humanities and general science) for their Career Decision-Making score

Table No.7: Test of Homogeneity of Variance for Female Students

Levene Statistics	df1	df2	Sig
1.53	3	358	.20

Table No.7 shows that the sig value is .20 that is greater than .05; it means homogeneity assumption has been was carried out

Table No.8: ANOVA

	Sum of Squares	Df	Mean Square	F	Sig
Between Groups	1005.90	3	335.30	7.45	.00
Within Groups	16098.56	358	44.96
Total	17104.46	361

Table No. 8, it can be seen that sig value is .00 that is less than .05; it means there is significant difference in the mean scores of career decision making for female students. To reveal the difference Post Hoc Tucky Test was applied

Table No.9: Multiple Comparisons

(I) Group	(J) Group	Mean Difference (I-J)	Std. Error	Sig
Pre-Engineering	Pre-Medical	-10.02	2.76	.00
	Humanities	-3.76	2.27	.34
	Gen. Science	-6.12	2.39	.05
Pre-Medical	Pre-Engineering	10.02	2.76	.00
	Humanities	6.26	1.67	.00
	Gen. Science	3.89	1.83	.14
Humanities	Pre-Engineering	3.76	2.27	.34
	Pre-Medical	-6.26	1.67	.00
	Gen. Science	-2.36	.94	.06
Gen. Science	Pre-Engineering	6.12	2.39	.05
	Pre-Medical	-3.89	1.83	.14
	Humanities	2.36	.94	.06

Table No.9 shows that at the .05 significant level, there was significant difference (Sig=.00) for subject groups (pre medical and pre engineering) and for subject groups (pre medical and humanities), this provides that the female students of these groups significantly different towards Career Decision-Making

Findings

1-	Study exposed a strong positive relationship (0.98) between one’s knowledge and career related information that is career knowledge towards career Decision-Making.
2-	While making decision about career, male students of general science differ from students of humanities group.
3-	While making decision about career, female students pre-engineering, pre-medical and humanities groups differed.

Discussion

The current study established a strong positive association with a value of .98 between one’s knowledge and career related information that is known as career knowledge among higher secondary level students towards career decision making. For higher secondary level students, it is evident to know their potential and have latest career related information for better career decision. The findings of the present study are comparable to the findings of research done by Abdullah, Ghazali, Hussin and Talib (2018) on Career Decision Making Competence, Self-Knowledge and Occupational Exploration and found a strong positive relationship exists between one’s knowledge and career decision making. The findings of the present study also show association with the earlier researches on relationship between self knowledge and self-efficacy (Norida et al, 2014), the relationship between self knowledge and career decision difficulty among students of college level (Ali & Shah, 2013). The results provided that career related information and one’s self knowledge leads someone to select the suitable careers according to the interest and potential. The study also provided that difference occurs towards career decision making among students such as the current established that male students of humanities group differs the students of general science group. Similarly, while deciding career, female students of pre-medical, humanities groups and pre-engineering differed each other.

Recommendations

Keeping in view the results, following recommendations are made:

1-	It is needed to strengthen both one’s self knowledge and career knowledge of learners for better career decision making. Orientation session in this regard may help students for selection of career.
2-	General science and humanities are two different subject groups and learners of these groups need specific career knowledge and self knowledge in this regard. It is need to focus on pre-requisites’ of Carrier decision making  of students these subject groups .Special instructions may be imparted to learners through expert discussions, presentation, seminars and educational expos for enhancement of skills related to  career decision. 

3-	Female participants of the study from subject groups humanities, pre-medical and pre-engineering differ while tacking decision about career. These thrice areas have different pre requisites of one’s own knowledge and career related information. It is needed to enhance related self knowledge and carrier knowledge of female students by introducing them advancements in these fields. Workshops/seminars may be arranged for expert discussions in their related areas.

References

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