Career decision-making difficulties in professional choice: A research on last year students of maritime vocational high school and the other high schools in İzmir

Choosing a profession is one of the most important decisions made by the individual throughout his or her life. The choices made by people affect other decisions in their lives. This choice has a great impact on individual happiness, and subsequently indirectly on community welfare. The choice of profession generally is a very difficult and important decision to return. The individual has various difficulties in making this choice, which holds an important place in her or his life. Some people can easily overcome the difficulties they face in choosing a profession, while others cannot overcome it and can turn to an incorrect profession. It is not possible to have difficulty in career decision making for the individual who discovers his / her own interests, talents and values and tends to a profession in the direction of the needs of the society. In Turkey, choice of profession are concentrated in the transition from secondary to higher education. It is thought that the difficulty in this subject is experienced mostly by the 12th grade students who are educated at the level of secondary education. In particular, vocational high school students are expected to have less difficulty when they are trained to specialize in a particular profession. The aim of this study is to determine the differences in the career decision making difficulties between the 12th grade students of the maritime vocational high school and the other 12th grade students in İzmir. In addition, it is aimed to examine the differences in career decision making difficulties according to the profile information of the students participating in the study. In this research based on quantitative research approach, the method of scanning was applied. The data were collected using the Career Decision Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) which was prepared by Gati, Krauz and Osipow (1996) and adapted to Turkish by Bacanli (2008) and Kesici, Hamarta and Arslan (2007) to be applied to high school students. The participants of the study are 500 high school senior students who are educating at the schools of Güzelbahçe İMKB Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, Urla Hakan Çeken Anatolian High School, Güzelbahçe 60.Yıl Anatolian High School and Konak Çınarlı Vocational and Technical High School. The data obtained from the scale results were analyzed by using Mann Whitney U, ANOVA and correlation test on SPSS package program. As a result of the study, it has been concluded that maritime vocational high school students have more difficulties than anatolian high school students, the students participating in the study have medium difficulty level, vocational high school students have more difficulties than anatolian high school students, female and male students have same difficulty level in career decision making difficulties. It has been concluded that as the education and income levels of their families increased, the students' career decision-making difficulty levels decreased, the students who declared that they made a professional decision had less difficulty than the students who declared that they did not give their professional choice and the confidence level to their professional choice increased, students' career decision-making difficulties levels decreased.