Vocational interest profiles in secondary school: Accounting for multiplicity and exploring associations with future-oriented choices.

Secondary school students in the Netherlands already face future-oriented decisions about their educational careers, which are expected to be informed by interests specific vocations or occupations. However, vocational interest assessment tools generally do not account for possibility that interested multiple domains, potentially challenging students’ decision-making processes. The present study examines different combinations of secondary have and explores how both differentiated nondifferentiated character these interests’ structures is associated with career-oriented A latent profile analysis on six realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional revealed seven distinct profiles across a sample 358 Grade 9 students, 40.8% had structure (i.e., low, neutral, broad interest) 59.2% social dominant, enterprising–conventional realistic–investigative artistic–social–enterprising dominant interest). This finding shows many show similar levels activities. Additionally, associations between track choices career image specificities were examined. Our results extend prior work showing having does necessarily mean more uncertain choice. We suggest future research can further explore decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)