Judgment of Factors Influencing Interest: An Australian Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that influence interest in vocational education subjects. The 20 factors that were investigated related to the course, ability, difficulty, relevance or importance of a subject, the quality of teaching, student effort, career and vocational interests, as well as demographic factors. The source data used in the study comprised 120 previously obtained student scenarios. Participants (N= 18) from technical and further education acted as judges. They read the information in each of the scenarios and were asked to judge how interested they would be in taking the vocational education subject described. The multiple correlation of the 20 items in each scenario with ranked interest was 0.84 yet the median correlation of judgments was only 0.305. Overall, career . interests were rated more importantly than other factors. Results confirmed the idiosyncrasy of interest perceptions and it was concluded that individual differences have an impact on the ways in which people determine their interest for learning. This paper focuses on the area of educational interest and the specific purpose of this study is to determine which factors might influence a person's interest in a vocational education subject. Interest is a meaningful field for practical as well as