Male and Female College Students' College Majors: The Contribution of Basic Vocational Confidence and Interests

The first purpose was to determine if overall gender differences in basic confidence as measured by the Expanded Skills Confidence Inventory (ESCI) and basic interests as measured by the 2005 Strong Interest Inventory (SII) would be present within eight college major families. As expected, anticipated overall gender differences in confidence and interests concerning realistic and conventional activities were visible within the major families as well. The second purpose was to determine whether basic domains of confidence and interests would differentially discriminate among the eight major families differentially for 171 male and 176 female college students. When confidence and interests were examined separately, the set of confidence predictors and the set of interest predictors significantly differentiated among college majors for both men and women. When confidence and interests were combined together as two sets of predictors, the hit rate was a significant improvement over the hit rate for the confidence set of predictors alone for both women and men. As anticipated, group centroids and structure matrices varied across men and women. (Contains 7 tables.)