The work values of female adolescents

The purpose of this study was to investigate the work values of female adolescents from traditional and nontradItional career families. This was accomplished by administering the Work Values Inventory (WVI) and a personal data fonn to 528 tenth grade females in six secondary schools in Virginia. The schools represented an approximately equal proportion of black and white females and rural arid urban geographic locations. Useable data was collected from 527 females. The services of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University were used to analyze the data, construct rank-order profiles of the subjects' scores, and test for significance among the variables. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) The work values of female adolescents from traditional and nontraditional career families are similar. In addition, parental educational level and geographic location of the female adolescents from traditional and nontraditional career families appear to be of little consequence in their assessed work values; (2) Black female adolescents scored higher than white females on eleven of the fifteen work values scales and black females placed more importance on intrinsic work values than on the extrinsic values; and (3) The overall responses of the female adolescents reflected higher mean scores than Super (1970) noted in 1968 for a similar group. The Altruism value now ranked seventh as compared to second in 1968. In addition, Achievement, Security, and Economic Returns showed higher rankings than in the 1968 study. Some implications concluded from this study may be of interest to career development researchers, theorists, and career counselors. First, it is apparent that the female adolescents have similar work values, regardless of the mothers' and fathers' employment status, perhaps dispelling some sex role myths that females from nontraditional career families model their mothers, thus establishing different work values than females from traditional career homes. Secondly, the differences detected in work values of black and white female adolescents should serve as a basis for future research concerning the influences of the family on work values as a function of race. Finally, the assumption that daughters use their mothers as role models is questionable in reference to work values. In addition, female adolescents are now interested in the nontraditional stereotyped work values of Security, Achievement, and Economic Returns. Ed. D.