ROLES OF PARENTS AND PEERS ON CHOICE OF CAREER AMONG SELECTED VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL SCHOOL STUDENTS

Career choice has been a recurrent problem among the students all over the world including Nigeria. It was a common practice in those days to find particular careers associated with particular families, where a blacksmiths son was destined to become a blacksmith and a leader’s son a born leader. This study therefore, examined the roles of parents and peer group on career choice of students of Technical schools with the hope of encouraging positive career choice. A non experimental research type of ex-post-facto was adopted in this study. The sample consisted of One hundred and twenty (120) participants randomly selected from six departments of Government Technical School, Ijebu-Ode. Nigeria. Three valid and reliable instruments constructed by the researchers were used for data collection: Peer Pressure Scale (r =0.78), Career Choice Scale (r =0.81) and Parental Influence Scale (r =0.72). The administration of the instruments lasted one week with the assistance of three trained research assistants. The results of multiple regression analysis used in analyzing data collected from the field showed that there was significant relationship between parental role (r= .648; p<0.05), peer group (r= .601; p<0.05), and career choice of the participants. The independent variables when pulled together have significant joint effect on choice of career among students (R (adjusted) =.700 and R2 (adjusted) =.482) with 48.2% of the variance accounted for by the predictor variables. In terms of magnitude of contribution, role of parents made more significant contribution (Beta= .448; t= 5.442; p<0.05) followed by role of peers (Beta= .333; t= 4.039; p<0.05). In view of these findings, the effective utilization of guidance and counseling services was advocated.