Asian Americans' career choices: A path model to examine factors influencing their career choices

Research on Asian American career development has found that Asian American s' occupational interests are typically predominant in the Investigative an d Realistic areas and that they may pursue a limited range of occupations. This study investigates factors that might influence Asian Americans' caree r choices and tests Lent et al.'s model to investigate the relationships am ong the predicting variables and the outcome variable (career choice) for 1 87 college students. Variables investigated are level of acculturation, fam ily SES, family involvement, occupational interests, and career self-effica cy. It was hypothesized that career choices are influenced by the predictin g variables in such a way that lower acculturated individuals tend to choos e more typical occupations (i.e., Realistic and Investigative occupations), that family background is influential on their choices, and that interest may not necessarily be related to their occupational choices. The results g enerally support the path model in explaining the factors influencing Asian American career choices. Asian Americans are influenced by acculturation, family background, and self-efficacy in choosing occupations. Implications are discussed for working with the Asian American population. (C) 1999 Acad emic Press.