Parental Factors Influencing Career Choice Among High School Students in Nairobi County
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent by which parental factors influence career
choiceamong form four students in Nairobi County. The study also sought to establish the
relationship and significance of this parental factors and the student’career choice. The
population of the study was all the 27,614 form four students who had enrolled for the Kenya
National Examinations Council (KNEC) examinations for the year 2016. A total of 400 students
were sampled for the study out of which 383 responded giving a response rate of 95.75%.The
survey used purposive sampling technique to sample 10 schools from Nairobi County to carry
out the survey while simple random sampling technique was used to sample the students.
Questionnaires were used as the instruments for data collection. Statistical Package for Social
Sciences (SPSS) software was used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies
and percentages were used to analyse the data. The results were presented in the form of tables
and graphs.
Results from the study showed that parental factors influence the career choice of students in
Nairobi County. These factors included parental highest education level, parents’ occupation,
parental values and expectations, and parent-child relationships. However, established that
92.4% of the parents of Nairobi County students were middle class economic income and above.
As such the socio-economic status of the family was found not to influence the career choice of
the students.
The study recommended that teachers, parents, and career guidance counsellors should take into
cognizance the influence of parental factors as they guide students throughthe process of career
selection.This will enable the students to make sound career choices depending on their
educational achievement and career aspirations.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
- Faculty of Education (FEd) [6020]
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