Personality differences of college science teachers and medical technologists in determining career choices

Undergraduate students who major in science make diverse career choices. Two such diverse career choices are medical technologists and science teachers. One possible reason for science majors selecting different career choices might be attributed to varied personality dimensions. The purpose of the present study was to identify a set of personality attributes that distinguish practicing medical technologists from practicing science teachers. Subjects. The subjects of the study consisted of 83 medical technologists and 57 college/university science teachers in the metropolitan Houston area. Instruments. Three different instruments were utilized in the study: (1) Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI): The EPI was utilized to investigate the personality attributes of the subjects in terms of Eysenck's personality variables of Extroversion-Introversion and Neuroticism-Emotionality. 2. Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI): VPI was utilized to investigate the vocational preferences of subjects in terms of Holland's classification of vocations as Intellectual (I), Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Artistic (A). 3. Biographic Inventory Blank (BIB): Holmes' BIB was utilized to investigate the biographic correlates of the subjects. Results. Data with EPI revealed the E score for the group of medical technologists to be 12.783 and that for science teachers to be 12.737. The N score for the group of medical technologists was found to be 10.855 and that for science teachers was found to be 9.651. VPI yielded six scores representing the following vocational interest types: Intellectual, Realistic, Conventional, Social, Enterprising and Artistic. Personality profiles of the two groups were determined by rank ordering the group average scores of the six different scales of VPI. Data revealed the personality profile of medical technologists group to be IASECR (Intellectual, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional, Realistic) and that of science teachers group to be IASRCE (Intellectual, Artistic, Social, Realistic, Conventional, Enterprising). Data with BIB yielded a sum total score of 2.012 for the medical technologists group and a sum total score of 0.012 for the science teachers' group. This difference was found to be statistically not significant. [...]