The effect of vocational introductions on the professional tendencies of eighth grade students

The aim of the study is to determine whether the effect of professional introductions made by professional representatives on the eight grade students' thoughts that will form the professional tendencies of eighth grade students varies depending on various factors. The study group consists of 82 students who studied in the eighth grade of a public school in Sivas city center in the academic year 2013-2014. The research was carried out according to the experimental model, one of the quantitative research methods, and a single group pretest-posttest model was used. The "professional decision inventory" developed by Çakır (2003) used as a data collection tool and the personal information form created by the researcher and interview forms used before and after the professional introductions made by the professional representatives were applied. In the analysis of the data, frequency, percentage, chi-square values were found from the data obtained from the research and t-test was used to test the difference between the averages when the groups showed normal distribution and Mann Whitney U test was used to test the difference between the averages. Single-factor ANOVA was also calculated for unrelated samples. According to the results of the research, eighth grade students tend to professions primarily in line with their interests and abilities, and second, they are influenced by the people they model around them. 72 % of the students stated that they had acquired sufficient information about the profession they were inclined to after the vocational introductions, 87.8 % stated that the vocational introductions were effective. There was a significant difference between the pre-test scores and posttest scores of eighth grade students in the vocational decision inventory of vocational introductions made by professional representatives. When we look at the arithmetic mean values, it is pointed out that the posttest score of the occupational decision inventory is more than the pretest score. According to this, it can be said that the professional introductions made by the professional representatives have a positive effect on the vocational decision inventory scores of the eighth grade students. It was concluded that the vocational decision inventory posttest scores of the eighth grade students of the vocational introductions made by professional representatives did not show a significant difference according to gender, parental education status and parental profession, and showed a significant difference according to the monthly income of the family. Recommendations were made in line with the findings.