Developmental antecedents to adolescents' occupational knowledge: A 17-year prospective study

Thirty-two variables across the age span of birth to 16 ye;us were examined to investigate the developmental sequence antecedent to adolescents' knowl edge of occupations at age 17 years. The criterion for knowledge of occupat ions was the Career Maturity Inventory-Competence Test (Crites, 1978), and the predictors were variables collected prospectively from a birth cohort, the St. Louis Baby Study (Jordan, 1976, 1994, 1998). In Phase I, predictor variables in four sets based on the developmental psychology constructs Fam ily, Dynamic, Cognitive, and Somatic were reduced by multiple linear repres sion. In Phase II, a fifth, model, Generic, evolved empirically from the pr evious four models. Also, a sixth model, Developmental conceptually generat ed, provided a parsimonious explanation of the predictor variables and crit eria across the years birth to 17 years. Within the: variables available fo r analysis we see that adolescents' grasp of occupational information is fo rmed in a developmental process whose antecedents are highlighted at birth by the family's circumstances, at the end of the preschool era by cognitive -conceptual attainment, and in early adolescence by a second cognitive meas ure, vocabulary, (C) 2001 Academic Press.