The connection between personal self-conception and the choice of profession among high school students

Problem and purpose. The problems of personal selfconception and professional identity, meaning the choice of profession at the age of adolescence, are formulated and analyzed in the article. Among all the problems of the set the problem of studying the interconnection between the personal self-conception and the choice of profession is of particular importance. The knowledge obtained as the result of the research can be used in planning occupational guidance work for high school seniors. The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the characteristic features of personal self-conception connected with the choice of profession The methodology of the research is based on the analysis and generalization of scientific works by foreign and domestic scholars recognized by scientific community. Results. Making use of statistical processing the authors of the article verified the hypothesis of their research about the existence of a connection between professional self-identification and personal self-conception at the age of adolescence. An estimation of non-parametric U criterion of Mann - Whitney based on the number of school-leavers’ answers in accordance with the scales of self-conception by V.V. Stolin, which included nine components of self-conception: closeness, self-confidence, self-guidance, reflected self-conception, self-evaluation, self-acceptance, self-attachment, inner proneness to conflict, self-acusation. The meaning of the U-criterion of Mann-Whitney was determined for each component of self-conception in senior high school students with matching abilities, interests, inclinations to the chosen profession as well as for a group of boys and girls who chose their professions without taking into account these features. Conclusion. In the course of the research, the hypothesis stated at the beginning of our research was confirmed: there is a connection between personal self-conception of boys and girls in the two groups under investigation: 1) where the choice of the profession corresponded to the interests and inclinations of the respondents. 2) where the interests did not correspond to the future profession. The members of the first group had a higher level of selfconception, namely, of” self-confidence” and “self-acceptance”. While the components of “self-attachment” and “inner proneness to conflict” were on a lower level with them in comparison with the second group.