Personality and professional interests in Angolan university students

1. Personality and professional interests in Angolan university students Liliana Faria1, Joana Carneiro Pinto2 & Nazaré Loureiro31Universidade Europeia; 2Universidade Católica de Lisboa; 3Clínica Saúde Atlântica

2. Introduction • The type of personality, developed differently in each person, and according to distinct biological potential and personal stories, exerts a major influence on the career choice (Holland, 1973) • The differentiation of personalities, that tend to crystallize between 18 and 30 years old, leads individuals to develop particular forms of response to environmental demands • Thus, choosing a career is a manifestation of the personality of each individual (Holland, 1959)

3. Introduction Our personality and the way we cope with stress are two main factors in the development The word “personality” relates to patterns of behavior and attitudes that are typical of a particular individual, so that the personality traits differ from one individual to another remaining, however, relatively constant and stable in each person (Rebollo & Harris, 2006)

4. Introduction The interests and their assessment occupy a central position in the vocational guidance process, being proven its role in improving the quality of education, such as the involvement of students in productive work (Leitão, 2004) The choice of a profession tends to be related to several factors, such as the internalization of the social environment in which the young developed and imposition by society, that he should build a professional identity in adolescence (Silva, 1999) One purpose of vocational guidance and interest assessment has been to help clients to combine on individual characteristics with the characteristics work environments, and identify suitable occupations which correspond to the client’s interests (Holland, 1997) Research and theory suggests that there are a direct relationship between a vocation congruent to one’s interests and a job satisfaction (Spokane, Meir, & Catalano, 2000)

5. Participants • Participated in this study 63 Angolan young adults, from both sexes, (31, 49.2% girls and 32, 50.8% boys), aged 17 to 20 years old (µ=19±0.78) • These adolescents are fellows of the program of scholarships abroad and were attending a preparation course for higher education in Portugal, in the academic areas of economy and management, and technology

6. Measures Neo Personality Inventory-Revised (McCrae & Costa, 1992; adapted by Lima, 1997) Neo Personality Inventory-Revised aims to assess the five dimensions of personality. Its adapted version consists of 60 items in a likert format (scale of five response categories ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”), organized into five dimensions: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Through description of the subject's position in the five dimensions, it gives a comprehensive scheme, which summarizes the person’s emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal and motivational style. The English version of the NEO-PI-R measures the same dimensions of personality that the American version, with good psychometric properties reported alphas of .86, .75, .76, .72 and .84 for the dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, respectively.

7. Measures Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, 1973) SDS was developed with the purpose of supporting the identification of personality characteristics, taking into account the definition of congruent occupational environment with personality, depending on interests and capabilities It is an instrument grounded in the hexagonal model of Holland on the characteristics of six types and the nature of person-environment interactions. It is structured into three sections: Activities, Skills, and Jobs Each section comprises items organized into the dimensions proposed by Holland, namely Realistic (R), Investigative (I) Artistic (A), Social (S), Entrepreneur (E) and Conventional (C) This instrument is self-administered, easily interpreted by the participant and includes studies of adaptation to the Portuguese context

8. Results • Results demonstrate statistically significant correlations between: • extroversion and social interests • openness to experience and realistic interests • amabilityand enterprising interests • Statistically significant differences were also found in the: • artistic interest according to sex • extroversion dimension according to academic area

9. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Further research should also be undertaken in the future to fulfill this gap and it would be interesting to include other Vocational Guidance’s instruments in order to provide another theoretical framework and data for psychologists working in professional guidance in Angola It would be also useful to include other important data and instruments for the process of choice besides interests, constructs such as career decision, maturity, self-efficacy, personality and skills, for instance.

10. Personality and professional interests in Angolan university students Liliana Faria1, Joana Carneiro Pinto2 & Nazaré Loureiro31Universidade Europeia; 2Universidade Católica de Lisboa; 3Clínica Saúde Atlântica