Career awareness of women’s university students

Studies on the grade difference and the Ideal life course

Abstract

   The present study aimed to analyze the career awareness of women’s university students using the CAVT (career action vision test), and clarify their awareness according to the grade difference and their ideal life courses. The study subjects comprised 307 first- to fourth-year students, and their ideal life courses and data from the Fifteenth Japanese National Fertility Survey (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare) were compared. This indicated that our data were similar to the distributions of representative samples of women’s university students. Grade-based analyses revealed that vision scores were higher for first- and fourth-year than second-and third-year students. Action scores were higher for fourth-year than third-year students, and were higher for first-year than second- and third-year students. It was suggested that first- and fourth-year students have higher-level career awareness compared with second- and third-year students. Analyses according to the ideal life course revealed no significant differences in action scores; on the other hand, the vision score for “balancing and unmarried employment” was higher than that for “Unknown and full-time housewife”. This suggested that students choosing the former have higher-level awareness of the concept of a life plan compared with those choosing the latter.