Abstract:

Self-knowledge is an important and sometimes determinant process in an effective self-career management intervention as it provides systematic information about values, skills, and interests and allows reflection about them. Values, skills and vocational interests are considered cognitive instruments that allow reality apprehension and behavior guidance. Values involve personal judgments about what is right, appropriate, and desirable. Therefore, are suitable to predict some actions and some individual choices. Skills are made of individual representations related to personal capability, and are based on diverse personal experiences and influenced by the interaction contexts characteristics. In turn, interests are related to a personal evaluation about a specific object. That is, about attention, feelings (pleasant or unpleasant) and willing to approach that specific object (interact or not with it). In these terms, external references may strongly influence individual decisions, by using critical information in a greater or smaller rate, for instance, related to organizational, family, social and occupational environment. Thus, this study’s goal is to analyze and reflect about college students’ values, skills and interests representations as well as to analyze differences related to sex and course. 106 Portuguese young adults, from both sexes, participated in this study (76 girls-70.4% and 32 boys-29.6%), with age ranged from 19 to 25 years old (µ=21±0.78). These Portuguese young adults are students attending the 2nd grade in a Portuguese college, in academic areas related to social sciences and humanistic. They were assessed by two instruments specifically designed for this assessment (“My Values Career Key” and “My Competences Career Key”) and by the “Self-Directed Search” (SDS; Holland, 1973). Results show that the most significant and describing values for this group are achievement, progress and family. The most relevant perceived skills are sense of responsibility, team work and sense of organization. Interest are more artistic, entrepreneur and conventional. There were no statistically significant differences related to sex and course. These results are important to vocational psychology, to vocational development and also to vocational interventions. Therefore, this study ends with some applied implications.

Keywords:

Self-knowledge, self-career management.