Modeling IT Career Choice for the Differently Abled: Military Personnel and Veterans with Disabilities

摘要

Increasing our understanding of barriers affecting IT career choice for persons who have acquired disabilities adds to the growing body of research on social inclusion in the IT field that is examining factors influencing the entrance into and persistence within programs of study for an information technology (IT) career by members of underrepresented groups. These groups include women, and African American, Latino, and Native American individuals. Prior research on IT career choice for these under represented people produced an IT career choice model that identified the following factors: gender roles, IT roles, role congruency, individual identity and self-efficacy (i.e. an individual's self confidence that they can fulfill IT roles) (Joshi et al., 2013). In this research we add to this model a new category of underrepresented individuals: persons with disabilities.