Career Decisionmaking: Youth Futures In Context

摘要

In order to understand better how young people consider joining the military, we investigated the more general processes by which young people make (or do not make) decisions about their future work or career situations. In- depth, open-ended interviews were conducted over the telephone between December 1995 and May 1996. We interviewed 120 young men who had responded to the YATS survey in the fall of 1995. The pool was restricted to 17-21 year-old youth who were high school seniors, graduates, or were in post secondary schools. Within each race/ethnic and propensity group, quotas were set to establish balance in terms of age, educational status, work status, and region of the country. Interviewers followed a general protocol, which laid out the topics of interest (i.e., post-high school career plans, military propensity, images of the military, and knowledge about the military). In contrast to the structured YATS interview, these were open-ended and probing. The interviews were aimed at collecting information about the historical unfolding of these young men's career plans. We were interested in the young people's deeper thoughts and feelings, not their 'top of mind' reactions.