Factors Influencing Career and Programme Choices Among Senior High School Students in Ashanti Mampong Municipality, Ghana

Abstract

The study examined factors that influenced career and programme choices among senior high school students in the Ashanti Mampong municipality. The population for the study was students from the public Senior High Schools in the Ashanti Mampong Municipality. A sample of 2,642 students was selected for the study. A multistage sampling procedures were used in the sampling process namely, purposive, proportional and simple random sampling. A descriptive survey was the research design adopted for the study. The instrument used to collect data was the questionnaire. The data were analysed using means and standard deviation while the hypotheses was tested using independent sample t-test. Results revealed that environmental factors, institutional factors, and personal characteristics influenced students career choice and choice of programmes at the tertiary institution. The study further revealed that male and female students considered environmental factors, institutional factors and personal characteristics when making decisions about their careers and programme to study at the tertiary institution. Based on these findings, it is recommended that educators and school counsellors should focus on parents’ socio-economic status when counselling students on career choices and pursuit of higher education. Again, the school management and counsellors should ensure that students get accurate and reliable information about the tertiary institutions they are interested in, especially reliable information on the programme of which they wish to pursue.