Agreement between college major and vocational interests for female athlete and non-athlete college students

The agreement between college major and measured vocational interests was calculated for a sample of female student-athletes (n = 83) and two college student contrast samples-women enrolled in a career decision-making course (n = 73) and women enrolled in an introductory psychology course (n = 81). A matching procedure was used to pair each participant′s college major with corresponding Occupational Scale scores from the Strong Interest Inventory. Overall, participants from the introductory psychology sample showed the highest agreement between major and vocational interests, with 70.4% having Excellent and Moderate levels of agreement compared with 62.7% of the student-athletes and 52.1% of the career course students. The χ² analysis showed that the differences in agreement between the student-athletes and the comparison samples were non-significant at p =.05, although the direction was as expected. The level and pattern of interests was quite similar among the three samples, suggesting that choice of major and fit with interests is what differentiated the groups on the agreement measure. The findings are discussed within the context of identity formation theory (Marcia, 1966).