Conducting Studies on Person-Centered Career Interest Profiles: An Illustrative Example in Hong Kong

Hong Kong as a Particular Context for Career Interest Profiles Development

Three characteristics of Hong Kong’s society may affect the career interest development of high school graduates and undergraduate students in Hong Kong (Law, Wong, & Leong, 2001). First, business activities in Chinese societies are highly related to interpersonal relationships such that business and social interests are relatively similar and closely related to each other. Second, the education system in Hong Kong divides students into science and nonscience streams early. After completing 9 years of mandated education (primary and junior high school), some students choose either science or nonscience streams to continue their senior high school study, while others seek employment or receive vocational training. Third, Hong Kong’s society has a strong social preference for the science stream, which tends to be chosen by students with relatively better academic performance. Students in the science stream take lessons in science subjects such as mathematics and biology, along with language subjects, but not in social sciences and arts. Their formal education is limited to activities closely related to realistic and investigative occupations. For those who are not in the science stream, their curriculum is more diversified, facilitating them to develop career interests that are related to artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional occupations. Based on these three characteristics, Law et al. (2001) found that the R–I end of the Holland hexagon is further away from the A–S–E–C ends. This finding was confirmed in Wong and Wong’s (2002, 2006) studies with multiple samples of Hong Kong students who receive senior secondary and undergraduate education. These studies suggested two profiles of career interests: “science” having particularly high levels of realistic and investigative interests and “nonscience” having particularly high levels of social, enterprising, and conventional interests.

Those investigations were conducted before 1997. With the changes after the return of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, two additional patterns of career interests may have occurred. Under British colonial rule before 1997, the colonial government adopted an elite education system in which a significant portion of students could not continue their senior secondary education. Among those who received senior secondary education, only a small percentage could be admitted to government subsidized undergraduate programs. After 1997, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSAR) began to provide free, while not compulsory, senior secondary school education so that most students could continue their school education. Although the portion of students entering undergraduate programs is still limited to less than 20%, the government expanded postsecondary education by introducing many associate degree programs (HKSAR, 2016). Students completing these programs can seek employment or apply for undergraduate programs depending on their academic performance. With these changes, almost all students now continue their senior secondary education after junior secondary education.

Although the government has introduced some curriculum reform to reduce the sharp distinction between the science and nonscience streams (Cheng, 2009), differences are still substantial and further reinforced by Hong Kong’s segregation of schools into three bands (Bray, Zhan, Lykins, Wang, & Kwo, 2014). Band 1 schools admit students with the highest academic levels who would concentrate mostly on their academic studies instead of on potential careers or jobs. These students’ career interests may be delayed since their priority is to perform well in the university entrance examinations. In contrast, graduates from Bands 2 and 3 schools have lower chances of being admitted by undergraduate programs. They may consider career training after graduating from senior high school. Band two and three schools are also willing to provide guidance to help their students gain clarity of career interests and the possible types of future jobs or careers they may select. However, some students who are extremely weak in academic subjects may choose to enroll in senior secondary programs because it is free and everyone is doing it. These students may not develop any type of career interest. Hence, some students may have the chance to develop interests in most types of occupational activities, while others may not have such chance. We propose the following:

Hypothesis 1: There are four major career interest profiles among Hong Kong students: (1) Science Profile, students showing relatively high levels of realistic and investigative interests; (2) Nonscience Profile, students showing relatively high levels of artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional interests; (3) Mostly High Profile, students having relatively high levels of interests in most of the six types of occupational activities; and (4) Mostly Low Profile, students having relatively low levels of interests in most of the six types of occupational activities.

Outcomes and Predictors of Career Interest Profiles

Decisiveness in career choice refers to the extent to which an individual has made up his or her mind concerning what kinds of jobs and future careers he or she will pursue (Lee, 2001). This concept has received wide attention from career researchers. The six types of vocational interests are showed to be positively related to occupation considerations (Lent, Brown, Nota, & Soresi, 2003). Individuals with strong investigative and social interests experience low career indecision (Burns, Morris, Rousseau, & Taylor, 2013). These findings suggest that when young adults have a strong interest in some occupational activities, it is likely that they have a clearer idea about their preferred kinds of jobs and careers. Following the logic of these findings, we expect that students in the Mostly High Profile have higher levels of career decisiveness than their counterparts in other three groups, while students in the Mostly Low Profile may feel difficult to make career decisions. Students in the other two groups are interested in some job types, but their limited interests are likely to impede their career choice. We thus hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 2: Students in the Mostly High Profile group have the highest level of career decisiveness.

Chinese young adults tend to be influenced by their parents. As evidenced in their investigation of college students in Hong Kong, Wong, Wong, and Peng (2011) found that the career interests of parents (both father and mother) are related to students’ career interests. We thus reason that parental open communication style may be associated with students’ career interest configurations. Parents with a high level of open communication style may encourage their children to exchange ideas, express feelings, and consider an issue from multiple points of view (Jaskiewicz, Combs, Shanine, & Kacmar, 2017). Parents’ willingness to communicate openly on issues from various perspectives can enable students to gain more experience and advice regarding the development of career interests. Furthermore, students whose parents communicate openly are more likely to possess positive characteristics because they have a stronger desire to control the events in their lives (Jaskiewicz et al., 2017). Therefore, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 3: Parents of students in the Mostly High Profile group have the highest level of openness in communication with their children.

Career is along the span of a person’s life (Hall, 1976), which leads us to propose life satisfaction as an outcome of career interest profiles. Referring to something that one likes to do, interests can serve as motivating forces pulling individuals toward certain activities (Almeida, Ahmetoglu, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2014). When individuals perform interested tasks, they do so because they want to and not because they have to, leading to enjoyment and comfort. As noted in Holland’s model of vocational interests, individuals with a particular career interest tend to feel comfortable in a work environment that matches their interest (Kantamneni, 2014). Thus, if individuals have a strong interest in various types of occupational activities, they have more opportunities to be engaged in those activities with feelings of happiness and enjoyment. As the Mostly High and Nonscience Profiles encompass a wider range of vocational interests than the Science and Mostly Low Profiles, we expect that students in these two profiles are more likely to engage in the activities they are interested, therefore experiencing a higher level of life satisfaction than their counterparts in the other two profiles.

Hypothesis 4: Students in the Mostly High and Nonscience Profile groups have a higher level of life satisfaction than their counterparts in the other two profile groups.

Measures

Strategy of Data Analyses

To test the hypotheses, we conducted latent profile analysis (LPA) in Mplus Version 7.30 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2014). Following Nylund, Asparouhov, and Muthén (2007), we began by specifying two latent profiles and then increased the number of latent profiles until the increased model fit no longer merited the reduction in parsimony. We used seven fit statistics to evaluate profile structures (Foti, Bray, Thompson, & Allgood, 2012): log likelihood (LL), Akaike information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information criterion (BIC), sample size–adjusted BIC (SSA---BIC), Lo–Mendell–Rubin (LMR) likelihood ratio test, bootstrap likelihood ratio test (BLRT), and entropy. In comparison with other profile solutions, the LL, AIC, BIC, and SSA-BIC values of the best model should be lower and entropy should be larger; LMR and BLRT should be significant (p < .05). We used the DE3STEP command in Mplus 7.30 (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2013) to test the potential differences of career decisiveness among the career interest profiles.

Measures

Theoretical Implications

Our research contributes to the literature on career interests in general and to the interest profile approach specifically. The literature has largely examined the impact of each type of interest on people’s career-related issues (Van Iddekinge et al., 2011). This traditional approach to vocational interests is construct-centered and has not identified the interest patterns that individuals form in real life, despite some studies having suggested such a possibility (e.g., Tay et al., 2011). Recognizing this limitation, researchers have turned to a profile approach and identified patterns of individuals’ career interests (Leuty et al., 2016; McLarnon et al., 2015; Perera & McIlveen, 2018). Consistent with their studies, our research found that individuals could be classified into different configurations of career interest types. In the specific context of our research, four profiles appeared: Mostly High, Science, Nonscience, and Mostly Low. We provide additional evidence showing the significance of investigating career interest profiles. Our study, together with prior three studies, enriches the understanding about individuals’ vocational interests by demonstrating alternative patterns of individuals’ career interests.

Our research contributes to the interest profile approach specifically. First, we provide guidelines for empirical studies designed to test the validity of the proposed forms of career interest profiles. The guidelines are identifying patterns of career interests based on a strong rationale or a specific social context, using multiple samples to cross validate the identified patterns, and including outcomes and predictors to test the validity of the identified profiles.

Second, we conducted our research in Hong Kong, whose cultural context differs from those of prior studies. Although patterns of career interests have been identified, some of them are similar whereas others are not. Cultural context may be a way to examine the validity of the interest profiles (Perera & McIlveen, 2018). In Hong Kong, the education system divides students into science and nonscience streams very early. Given such characteristic, science and nonscience groups may be unique to young adults in Hong Kong. Our results support this possibility and suggest that how individuals’ career interests are configured is contingent on specific cultural contexts.

Third, our research examined individuals’ interest patterns via two independent samples. The limited number of studies on career interest profiles mostly studied one sample. This makes it difficult to arrive at a robust conclusion on the identified patterns. To know whether identified latent profiles can be replicated across distinct samples in a particular population (Perera & McIlveen, 2018), at least two samples should be used to verify the profiles unless a truly large and random sample can be drawn from the population. We tested our proposed profiles of interest from cohorts of senior secondary school graduates who were job seekers and first-year university students, and similar results were obtained from these two independent samples. Hence, our research contributes to the literature on career interest profiles by providing evidence from two independent samples in a particular cultural context.

Practical Implications

By identifying four patterns of career interests in the context Hong Kong, our research provides implications for career counselors in this society. The four patterns (Mostly High, Science, Nonscience, Mostly Low) suggest that there are cohorts of young people in Hong Kong who may be interested in some, all, or not much interested in any work activities. With such knowledge, career counselors can differentiate individuals more accurately in terms of their vocational interests and provide more appropriate career services. For example, individuals in the Mostly High Profile have strong interests in many areas, and career counselors can help them solidifying a career choice rather than considering a number of different options. For individuals in the Science Profile and the Nonscience Profile, career counselors may help them practice more on their interested work activities so as to well prepare for future jobs. For individuals who display the Mostly Low pattern, practitioners may focus on finding out why these individuals have little interests and then take interventions to foster their interests in some job activities. Our study also provides insight into the design of school curriculum. Hong Kong’s career education is quite deficient in the senior secondary education curriculum. Some students are deprived of early opportunities to develop interests in various occupational activities, as evidenced in the 12% Mostly Low Profile group in the first sample and 46% Mostly Low Profile group in the second sample. When designing education curriculum, school leaders may take into consideration of a valid classification of students according to their career interests and accordingly design curriculum and extracurricular activities to broaden their students’ exposure to various occupation-related activities.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

First, we cannot include all of the hypothesized outcomes and predictors in our first sample because the government agency only allowed us to include career-related variables in the survey. Hence, our results regarding parental communication and life satisfaction must be interpreted with caution. Second, we cannot claim the causal relationships between the correlated variables and career interest profiles with a cross-sectional and self-report design. Future research may use a more rigorous design to test the antecedents and consequences of different career profiles to further validate our findings. Third, our hypotheses are based on the specific situation in Hong Kong. We are cautious about generalizability of this study to other regions. It will be interesting to see whether these profiles are equally applicable to other Chinese or even non-Chinese societies, where similar education systems or cultures are in effect. Fourth, our two samples were small, which might have influenced heterogeneity and the identified profiles. Given that students are heterogeneous on career interests (Perera & McIlveen, 2018) and the principle of parsimony in the class solutions of LPA, our results may not be affected much by the two small samples. Nonetheless, we call for future studies with larger samples in cultural contexts similar to ours. In case an additional profile merged, it would be interesting and meaningful for career counseling.

We also recommend future efforts on the Science group identified in our research and its relationship with life satisfaction. As found in our research, the Science group exhibited lower life satisfaction than the Mostly Low group. It would be meaningful to explore why this happens. Besides, the Mostly Low Profile in Study 2 is superior to their counterparts in Study 1 in the development of various career interests (Table 3). Due to the specific education of Hong Kong, this difference may be a function of the students’ academic proficiency. Future research may examine the relationship between academic proficiency and career interest development. We also recommend future research to explore whether there are specific differences regarding the relationships between four profiles and career decisiveness and parental openness communication.

To conclude, this research established a guideline for investigating career interest profiles by illustrating Hong Kong as a specific context. Four career interest profiles were identified across two independent samples: Mostly High, Science, Nonscience, and Mostly Low Profiles. Theoretically, this study extends vocational interest theory in general and the interest profile research specifically. Practically, our findings can provide Hong Kong’s practitioners with appropriate vocational counseling service.