Profile of vocational certainty in public and private universities: Personal and social variables

The objective of this study was to identify the influence of the social and course of study factors on vocational certainty in a sample that includes 392 third semester students from different Bachelors in public and private universities of the city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. It was used the Comprehensive Scale of Course of study Factors (IAFC) of Aguilar et al. (1992) version for colleges. In addition, vocational context indicators were included (Gimeno, Rocabert and Lopez, 1996, in Lopez, 2004); as well as school and socio-demographic data. By structural equations a multifactorial predictive model on vocational certainty is created, in which social and course of study variables explain 23% of the vocational certainty variance, getting a good fit. It is suggested the program design of educational orientation through which intervention is developed in socio-labor, academic and personal environments so as to facilitate the academic and professional students' elections. © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.