The major-interest congruence of Dutch high school seniors, and the influence of parents and peers

Abstract

This study is aimed at the major-interest congruence of Dutch first year students, and the influence of parents and peers thereon. The major-interest congruence is calculated with the Dutch translation of the RIASEC questionnaire, called the AIST-R (Bergmann, Eder, 2005), combined with the Holland’s Opleidingzoeker (Van Eijk, Uterwijk & Plateel, 2014). Questions about parental and peer influence are constructed and divided into three categories; parental steering, parental encouraging, and peer influence. The participants were 72 first year students. The regression analysis proofed that, in line with the hypothesis, both parental steering and peer influences had a negative impact on the major-interest congruence, but in contrast with the hypothesis, parental encouragement also proved to have a negative impact. Since these results are all insignificant, no conclusions can be made based on these results.