A THEORY-BUILDING INVESTIGATION OF THE SCHOOL-TO-WORK TRANSITION

This study sought to enhance an understanding of the school-to-work tr ansition for work-bound high school students. The objective was to ide ntify individual and contextual factors relevant to the school-to-work transition. The authors obtained interview data from a diverse sample of 45 employed young men and women (aged 18-29) who have been in this transition during the past 10 years. Using a grounded theory approach , a coding system was developed with quantitative and qualitative inde xes. The authors used job satisfaction and occupational choice congrue nce as subjective and objective means of capturing an adaptive school- to-work transition. initial correlational analyses were conducted with quantitatively derived variables to provide a framework for qualitati ve analyses. Qualitative analyses of participant narratives revealed s everal individual and contextual factors that characterize the adaptiv e school-to-work transition. The article concludes with a discussion o f the implications of these findings for career development theory as well as some propositions to guide future inquiry in this area.