Identifying the Career-Interest Profiles of Junior-High-School Students Through Latent Profile Analysis

Exploring the career-interest profiles of students has both practical and theoretical significance; however, a minimal amount of research has been conducted to address this issue. The present study combined latent profile analysis and differentiation values to investigate the career-interest profiles of 13,853 junior-high-school students. The results indicate that while the students' interests could be stratified into 25 profiles, 44.6% of students could be classified the as having low-differentiation profiles (such as like or dislike all types of vocational activities) and 24.9% of students could be classified the as having the artistic-social (like both artistic and social types of activities) profile. In addition, the proportions of females and males differed significantly among the profiles, but different grades did not. The proportion of males was higher for all three low-differentiation groups than of female proportions. Implications for career practices and future research are proposed.