The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the social support and the career development perceived by male and female 6th graders. It aims to find gender difference both in the social support and in the career development; analyze the relationship between the two variables; find out gender differences in the degree of the relationship. Especially, the social support that the elementary students perceived was distinguished by the sources of social support and types of social support, putting the focus of the study on analyzing their relationships with the career development.
For this, the social support scale and career development scale were administered to 372 6th graders in four elementary schools in Incheon. After conducting t-test and correlation analysis, using SPSS18.0 program for the statistical analysis, the result were as follows:.
First, female students perceived the social support higher than male students. In the sources of social support, they perceived father’s support and friend’s support higher. In the types of social support, they perceived information support, instrument support, and evaluation support higher. In addition, female students had higher level of career development than male students. Female students made more search about studying and occupation than male students,
and did more career planning activities.
Second, both female and male students showed significant positive correlation between the sources of social support and the career development. Thus, there was no gender difference in the relationship of the sources of social support and the career development. That is, regardless of gender, the more the 6th graders perceive social support from father, mother, teacher, and friend, the higher the level of career development.
Third, there was significant positive correlation between the types of social support and the career development for both male and female students. Therefore, there was no gender difference in the correlation between the types of social support and the career development. This means that the career development of 6th graders do not show gender differences in correlation with the types of social support, but that it has correlation with all supports of emotion, information, instrument, and evaluation.