Sociopsychological determinants of career maturity among secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria

The study examined socio-psychological factors' influence on secondary school students' career maturity in Osogbo, Osun state. In view of this, the socio-psychological factors identified in the study include emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, socio-economic status, gender, academic discipline and occupational prestige. Using a descriptive research survey design 300 secondary school students were selected through simple random sampling techniques from five (5) secondary schools in Osogbo. Standardized instruments were used for data collection in the study; these instruments were however revalidated. Three research questions were answered. The data obtained were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and multiple linear regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance. The results indicate that career maturity significantly (positive) correlated with Emotional Intelligence career self-efficacy, socioeconomic status, academic discipline and occupational prestige However, the relationship between gender and career maturity was not significant. The six (6) independent variables when pulled together have a significant effect on the student ’ s career maturity. Besides, each of the independent variables made significant contribution to the prediction of career maturity and Career self-efficacy made the most significant contribution to the criterion, followed by emotional intelligence and socio-economic status. However, occupational prestige, gender and academic discipline did not independently predict the career maturity of secondary school students. Based on the findings, it is recommended that counseling psychologists and other helping professionals should work on assessing and considering emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, socioeconomic status, occupational prestige and the academic discipline in the process of rendering career guidance to students.


INTRODUCTION
Career maturity is a very important aspect of career development of individuals especially the secondary school students in that they are at the stage of career development where there is a need for them to make career decisions. Career maturity can be defined as the readiness of individual to make career related decisions. Super (1960) was the first to make an explicit definition of career maturity and in his effort to explain the concept identified five dimensions of career maturity. These dimensions as identified by Super (1960) are; orientation to vocational choices, crystallization of traits, information and planning, consistency and wisdom of vocational preference. According to Miles (2008), career maturity is the extent to which an individual is able to master those career developmental tasks that are applicable to the relevant stage of his/her life. Career maturity is important during late adolescence when young adults have to make their initial career choices (De Raaf, Dowie, & Vincent, 2009) and refers to an individual's readiness to make an appropriate career choice (Super 1957). Brown (2003) conceived career maturity as emotional and cognitive attributes of an individual, which include skills to tackle the situations an individual face when making a career choice.
In addition, when the definitions of career maturity are evaluated, career maturity could be defined as having knowledge on occupations and the readiness of an individual to make appropriate choices in the light of that knowledge (Powell, & Luzzo, 1998, Savickas, 1984, Seligman, 1980). An individual should have a certain level of career maturity to make a career choice. It has been conceived that an individual with this competency could make healthier choices. Career maturity among students can either be low or high and it is influenced by certain socio psychological factors such as emotional intelligence, gender, career self-efficacy, socio economic status, occupational prestige and discipline (art, commercial, science and social science). These factors if properly harnessed could be the key to students having high career maturity. Hence, this study investigated socio-psychological variables (emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, gender, socio economic status, occupational prestige and academic discipline) as determinants of career maturity among secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun state.
Emotional intelligence is a set of psychological abilities that relates to life success. It is defined as the ability to perceive, assess and positively influence personal and other emotions (Mayer and Salovey 1995). It is the ability to monitor one's and other emotion and feelings, to discriminant among them and to use the information to guide one's thinking and actions. (Bar-on 1997, Goleman 1995. Emotional intelligence includes being aware of emotions, knowing the relationships between emotions and using emotions based on reasoning, problem solving and self-motivation (Köksal and İşmen, 2007). Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2000), define emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in the thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others.
A study conducted by Di Fabio and Palazzeschi (2008) revealed that less emotional intelligence is associated with a greater lack of readiness regarding the difficulties that the individual may encounter before stating the decisional process. This implies that emotional intelligence plays an important role in career maturity of an individual since career maturity talks about individual's readiness to make career related decisions. Emmerling and Cherniss (2003) revealed that individual with greater emotional intelligence tends to be more confident in his/her ability to make decisions related to career. They also argue that individuals with greater emotional intelligence are aware of their emotions and are better able to manage their emotions. Therefore, these individuals tends to avoid jobs and careers that can be impeding on their emotions as well as their general well-being.
Furthermore, the influence of career self-efficacy on career maturity has been of interests to various educators as well as researchers. According to Bandura (1977), selfefficacy refers to the belief that one has power to produce that effect by completing a given task or activity related to that competency. It refers to the perception an individual have on his/her ability to reach certain goal. Self-efficacy is a psychological state generally defined as possessing selfconfidence in performing specific task. It is also the expectation an individual have that he/she can master a situation, and produce a positive outcome.
In their seminal study of women career development, Heckett and Betz (1981) were the first to apply Bandura's (1977) propositions about self-efficacy to career behaviour. They demonstrated that career decisions, achievement and adjustment behaviours were subject to the influence of selfefficacy beliefs in both men and women. In recent years, self-efficacy has received attention as a key factor in determining the motivation behind some individuals' career choice. For instance, Zhao and Hill (2005) proposed a predictive model of achieving a career in which self-efficacy plays a meditating role. In a study conducted by Themba, Oosthulzen, & Coetzee in 2012, it was revealed that identifying and describing immature and mature career behaviour is made easier through a clear understanding of career maturity. Moreover, career mature individuals are generally better adjusted to their career, whereas maladjusted individuals' career choices are generally not consistent with their field of interest or their abilities (Crites 1971, cited in Themba et.al, 2012. Hence, Career selfefficacy could be conceptualized as the confidence an individual exhibit in regard to choosing a certain career or making career adjustment (Lent & Hackett, 1987, cited in Abdinoor & Ibrahim 2019. From another perceptive, it refers to the career confidence someone have that deals with the certainty about the career action performed. (Ramsamy & Nithyanandan 2016).
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines gender to mean the behavioural, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. Operationally, 'gender' is defined as an individual's state of being male or female. According to Istiana (2017), gender is a distinctive feature or characteristics that distinguishes between men and women. Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of both men and women (femininity and masculinity) such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men.
The influence of gender on career development is significant as individuals internalize gender roles propagated by culture. Socialization, child rearing practices and career expectations vary with gender. Career genderization starts in middle school (Adya & Kaise, 2005). Earlier, careers were seen to be a journey that only men embarked upon while women were more inclined toward the management of the family and home. However, this has changed with changes in social structures all over the world. Today, women are also career-oriented and pursue careers just like their male counterparts. In such times, gender role stereotyping may limit opportunities for both sex. Links have been found between gender and career development (Arulmani & Nag-Arulmani, 2006). The need to investigate if career related decisions are gender free or influenced by gender has been advocated in literature (Koumoundourou, Tsaousis, & Kounenou, 2011).
Another factor of interest in the present study in relation to career maturity is socio economic status (SES). Socio economic status is evaluated as a combination of factors including income, level of education and occupation. Socio economic status indicates one's access to collectively desired resources, such as material goods, money, power, friendship networks, healthcare, leisure time, or educational opportunities. It is a way of looking at how individuals or families fit into the society using economic and socio status that have been shown to impact the individual's health and well-being (Boskey, 2009). America Psychology Association (APA, 2013) confirmed that socio economic status is commonly conceptualized as the socio standing or class of an individual or group which is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation.
In a research by Bogie (1976) cited in Adekeye, Adeusi, Ahamadu & Okojide (2017), it was concluded that socio economic status was a strong predictor of the discrepancy between an individual's career aspirations and career selection (career maturity is an indices/determinant of both). According to Bozgeyikili, Eroglu, & Harmurcu (2009), the socio-economic status of parents as an economic factor may affect the early occupational adjustment and vocational influences of their children. The authors argued that socio economic status incorporate the parents' educational attainment, career status and family name. These factors, as well as other variables like opportunities, values and parental encouragement can impact an individual's potential vocational status (Schlenberg, Vondrack & Crouter 1984cited in Bozgeyikili, et al, 2009). Parental socioeconomic status is germane to career maturity of adolescence. This is more so as parents are the first and foremost influence in the lives of their children.
Another important factor considered in this study is occupational prestige. The prestige a child attaches to an occupation determines his occupational choice. According to Domanski (1991), prestige is one of the most explored research problems in history of sociology (cited in Czeranowska, 2016). Orenuga & Da Costa (2006) and Quineby & O'Brien (2004) confirmed that prestige attached to occupation plays a prominent role in choosing a career. Miller (1968) suggested that prestige include: Salary or income above the average of the community, work requiring intelligence rather the physical strength and work that will be recognized in one's business circle (cited in Iwuama 1999). However, the concept remains blurred; in many questionnaires, this word is replaced with others.
The high social status attached to some occupational areas influences students' career choice. The choice of occupational area by a student is bound to be affected if low prestige is attached to the particular occupational area. Some occupations have social status and prestige attached to them and held in high esteem. For this reason, most young people scrambled for them, asserted Olayinka (1983) (cited in Amasuoma, 2014). This implies that occupational prestige as a construct plays a role in career maturity level of individuals since it has influence on career choice and career maturity is one of the determinant of career choice.
In addition to the socio-psychological determinants discussed above, academic discipline is another sociopsychological determinant that is of interest to this study. The first step to choosing a career path for a secondary school student is to choose an academic disciple in secondary school. In Nigeria, this academic discipline is refer to as arm of study or stream of study and students entering the senior secondary level of a secondary school are the ones given the opportunity to choose from three available options which will be chosen based on the career path the student is interested in. The available academic discipline in a typical Nigeria secondary school are; science, art and commercial. These categories has led several researchers to carry out researches on the relationship between academic discipline and career development process which career maturity is one (Dahiya 2014, Gehlawat 2019). However, the researches relating these variable are few. For instance, Dahiya in 2014 conducted research exploring the difference in career maturity based on gender and stream of study (academic discipline) in 12 students in secondary school in Rohtak, India. Here, it was reported that students from science stream were found to have higher career maturity and students from commerce stream were found to have higher career maturity than those from the art stream but has lower career maturity than students from the science stream.

Statement of the problem
Decision making could be a very tasking issue especially if the individual does not have what is required to make such an important decision. The same is applicable to career related decisions, these decisions are very important because it goes a long way in determining the course of the individual's life. A large number of career choice are available these days for students to choose from, therefore, it becomes more difficult to make a mature choice. Moreover, career choices are influenced by a lot of factors such as gender, socio economic status, emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, occupational prestige as well as discipline. Hence, decision making is not only as result of exclusive intellectual process where options are carefully sorted out in logical manner, rather, decisions are also based on the individuals' career maturity. The interaction of these variables affect individuals' readiness for vocational planning as well as their success in choosing a career that best suit them.
In Nigeria, many find themselves in careers which they are not prepared for as a result of their not been matured enough as to which career suit them best. They therefore find it difficult to cope in challenging situations as they climb the ladder in their career. Some efforts have been made to proffer solutions to these challenges, however, the problem persists. Generally, there is lack of career maturity for Nigerian secondary school students (Salami, 2008). This might be because of the limited vocational options available to individuals, post-graduation. Where to go next after graduating from high school may pose problems. A sense of limited career options may be magnified by lack of meaningful employment options witnessed in contemporary Nigerian economy for there is mass unemployment (Oyebade, 2003). When high school students think of mass unemployment of the graduates, they might not be motivated to take the matter of career decision-making seriously and this will definitely lead to lower level of career maturity. They then, feel frustrated and confused. There are many problems associated with an adolescents (secondary school students) readiness to make effective and informed career decisions, therefore it is important to explore the relationship between various socio-psychological factors and career maturity. These socio-psychological factors include: emotional intelligence, gender, career self-efficacy, socio economic status, occupational prestige and academic discipline (art, commercial, science and social science). Therefore, the current study will explore the influence of sociopsychological factors on the career maturity of secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun state.

Purpose of the study
This study aimed at examining the influence of sociopsychological factors (emotional intelligence, career selfefficacy, gender, socio-economic status, occupation prestige and academic discipline) on the career maturity of secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun state. Specifically, the study will: 1) Investigate the pattern of the relationship among the independent variables (emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, gender, socio-economic status, occupation prestige and academic discipline) and the dependent variable (career maturity); 2) Determine the joint effect of the independent variables (emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, gender, socio-economic status, occupation prestige and academic discipline) on the dependent variable (career maturity); 3) Examine the relative effects of socio-psychological factors (emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, gender, socio-economic status, occupation prestige and academic discipline) on the dependent variable (career maturity).

Research questions
The following research questions were generated to guide this study: 1) What is the pattern of relationship among the independent variables (Socio-psychological factors-emotional intelligence, gender, career self-efficacy, socio economic status, occupational prestige and academic discipline) and the dependent variable (career maturity) of secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun state?; 2) What is the joint effect of the independent variables (sociopsychological factors) on the dependent variable (career maturity)? 3) What are the relative effect of the independent variables (socio-psychological factors) on the dependent variable (career maturity)?

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study adopted a descriptive survey research design of correlational type. The population comprised all secondary school students in Osogbo, Osun state. A sample of three hundred (300) secondary school students that are senior secondary school in Osogbo, Osun state were selected randomly from selected secondary schools. The sampling was done in stages, purposive sampling technique was used to select five (5) secondary schools and simple random sampling was used to select sixty (60) sixty participants from each of the selected schools. The sampling techniques adopted gives equal opportunity to all participants within the study target population equal chance of being selected or otherwise.

Instrumentation
The research instrument employed for this study was a questionnaire which consists of five sections (Sections A, B, C, D, E). The items of the questionnaire were based on 5point likert scale; (strongly agree, Agree, Undecided, Strongly disagree, disagree). Section A consists of information about the respondent. It was designed by the researcher in order to obtain demographic information about the background of the subjects in this study. Items found in Section A are; name of school, class, age, sex (used in measuring participant's gender), daily allowance, parent occupation and parental educational level (used in the measurement of the participant parent's socio-economic status); other information obtained include the participant's stream of study (used in the measurement of participant's academic discipline). The structure of the questionnaire is described below.
Career Maturity Inventory-Counselling Form C -This questionnaire was adapted by the researcher; this section of the instrument consist of items on career maturity. The Career Maturity Inventory-Revised (CMI-R) by Crites and Savickas (1995) is used in the measurement of career maturity in this study. This section consists of 24 statements about choosing the kind of job or work one will probably do when they finish school. The instrument is made up of four sub-scales, each consisting of six statements. In a research study conducted by Savickas & Porfeli (2011), the coefficient alpha for the CMI Form C total score was .86, and correlated .75 to the CMI Form A-1 total score and correlated with the five content scales in Form B-1, other versions of the form, which offered evidence of convergent validity. The researcher calculated Cronbach's alpha for the total CMI to determine the reliability of the instrument with the usable responses. The alpha coefficient was calculated to be .816. Typical items in this section reads as follows: "I don't know what courses I should take in school" "In making career choices, one should pay attention to the thoughts and feelings of family members". The maximum score here is 120 and the least is 24. A pilot study was carried out on a number of twenty (20) participants who are not part of the main study in order to find the reliability of the instrument; the reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach's Alpha reliability, the result from the analysis carried out showed reliability coefficient for career maturity is 0.841.
Career Self-efficacy Scale -This section of the instrument measures career self-efficacy of the study. The scale was adapted by the researcher to assess the career selfefficacy in participants; the items are selected based on literature review and it comprises of 12 items. A typical item in this scale reads: "I have the ability to perform well in any career of my choice". The maximum score in this section is 60 and the minimum is 12. A pilot study was carried out on a number of twenty (20) participants who are not part of the main study in order to find the reliability of the instrument; the reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach's Alpha reliability, the result from the analysis carried out showed reliability coefficient for career maturity is 0.618.
Emotional Intelligence Scale -This questionnaire was adopted by the researcher; this section of the instrument consist of 33 items on emotional intelligence. Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scales (SEIS) constructed by Schutte, Malouff, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden and Dornheim (1998) is used in the measurement of emotional intelligence in this study. Originally, the instrument was constructed from data based on 346 participants in the south eastern United States of America with the average age of 29 years. The participants then included university students and individuals from diverse community settings; who all had English has their first language. (Schutte et al., 1998). SEIS has a six factor structure: Positive Affect, Emotion-Others, Happy Emotions, Emotions-Own, Non-verbal Emotions and Emotional Management with cronbach alpha of 0.70-0.85 (Pérez, Petrides and Furnham, 2005). A typical item in this section reads: "when I feel a change in emotion, I tend to come up with new ideas". The minimum score in this section is 33 and the maximum score is 165. A pilot study was carried out on a number of twenty (20) participants who are not part of the main study in order to find the reliability of the instrument; the reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach's alpha reliability and the resulting reliability co-efficient was 0.819.
Occupational prestige Scale -This section of the instrument measures occupational prestige in the study. The scale used in measuring occupational prestige is selfconstructed: the items are constructed based on literature review and it comprises of 25 items. A typical item in this section reads: "members of my community highly respect and admire people in the occupation I choose". The minimum score in this section is 25 and the maximum score is 125. A pilot study was carried out on a number of twenty (20) participants who are not part of the main study in order to find the reliability of the instrument; the reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach's alpha reliability and the resulting reliability co-efficient was 0.630.

Procedure for data collection
The instruments were administered by the researcher with the help of some teachers in each school. The questionnaires were given to the students after the researcher had explained the purpose of the study and how they will fill it to them.

Data Analysis
Data were analysed using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Method and the Multiple Regression Analysis at 0.05 level of significance. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to find out the relationship among the variables in the study while, Multiple regression analysis was used to analyse the relative and composite contribution of the independent variables to the dependent variable. Based on the statistics presented in Table 1, there were 141 (47%) male respondents and 153 (53%) female respondents. Most respondents were from commercial class, 126 (42.0%); followed by students from Arts department, 113 (37.7%); while only 61 (20.3 %) science students were respondents of the study.

Answering of Research Questions
Research Question One: What are the significant relationships among variables: occupational prestige Emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, Gender, Discipline, Social Economic Status and career maturity? Table 2 contains descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among the study variables. As shown in the table, career maturity significantly (positive) correlated with career self-efficacy (r= .364; p<.01); Emotional Intelligence (r = .301; p<.05) and occupational prestige, (r = .221; p<.05); Academic discipline (r = .134; p<.05) and Social Economic Status, (r = .155; p<.01). However, the relationship between gender and career maturity was not significant (r = .068; p>.05). There were also inter-correlations among independent variables.
Research Question Two: What is the joint effects of independent variables: emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, occupational prestige, gender, discipline, social economic status on career maturity?
The table 3 above shows that the six (6) independent variables when pulled together have significant effect on the students' career maturity. The value of R is obtained as .477; R 2 as .277 and R 2 (adjustment) is obtained as .211. The analysis of variance performed on the multiple regressions yielded an F-ratio value of 14.362 and was found to be significant at 0.05. This shows that the six independent combined together to account for 21.1% of the variance in career maturity of secondary school students.   Research Question Three: What is the relative effect of independent variables emotional intelligence, career selfefficacy, occupational prestige, gender, academic discipline, social economic status to the prediction of career maturity? The

DISCUSSIONS OF FINDINGS
The analysis of relationship among Emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, academic discipline, Social Economic Status, occupational prestige and career maturity as shown in table 1 indicates that the correlation coefficient between five of the six dependent variables were significant. However, the relationship between gender and career maturity was not significant. This finding corroborates the finding of Alam (2012) who conducted a study on the students of Hyderabad found that there was a significant relationship between career maturity, emotional intelligence and self-efficacy. Similar findings were reported in the work of Hellman (2014) who found that career selfefficacy correlates positively with variables like career attitude, career exploration and career decidedness (these variables are dimensions of career maturity). In the same vein, past researchers, submitted that the family's economic resources or the socio-economic status is directly related student's level of career maturity (Annamalai, 2000;She, 2001;Gupta 2001;Adekeye, et al 2017). The result of this study also corroborates Salami (2008) who indicated that gender has no significant influence on the career maturity of adolescents and young adults. In recent years, there has been several campaigns on gender equality which emphasizes giving female and male equal access to both educational and career opportunities. This has therefore put both male and female on equal pedestal of career maturity. This probably explain the reason why there was no significant gender effect on career maturity of participants.
The findings of the study also revealed that the independent variables when pulled together had significant effect on career maturity of secondary school students. Susran and Habib (2009) showed that there was a significant relationship between career decision making self-efficacy and career maturity with socioeconomic status. Gupta (2001) also reported a significant relationship between career maturity of senior secondary school students and their socio economic status.
As obtained from the result, career self-efficacy made the most significant contribution to career maturity, then emotional intelligence and socio-economic status. However, occupational prestige, gender and academic discipline did not predict career maturity of secondary school students. This result supports that of Noor and Mohd (2019) who evaluated self-concept, career decision making self-efficacy and parental support as predictors of career maturity of senior secondary school students from low income environment, and found career decision making selfefficacy to be the strongest predictor of career maturity in the study, it also found a moderate correlation between career decision making self-efficacy and career maturity. Salami (2010) also found emotional intelligence to be predictive of career decision making self-efficacy and career maturity. One possible reason for this result is that both career maturity and emotional intelligence has a common goal which is, they both deals with understanding of self/self-knowledge. This therefore, explains the positive relationship between the two variables.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
From the findings of the study, it was observed that there are positive significant relationship between career self-efficacy, emotional Intelligence and occupational prestige, academic discipline, socio economic status and career maturity of secondary school students. However, relationship between gender and career maturity was not significant. There were also inter-correlations among independent variables. The study was also able to deduce that the six independent variables (emotional intelligence, socio economic status, gender, career self-efficacy, occupational prestige and academic discipline) when pulled together had significant effects on career maturity of secondary school students. It was also derived from the study that career self-efficacy made the most significant contribution to the career maturity of secondary school students. Then follow by Emotional intelligence, and Social Economic Status, However, occupational prestige, Gender and Academic Discipline did not independently predict career maturity of secondary school students.
Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that Counselling psychologists and other helping professionals should work on assessing and considering emotional intelligence, career self-efficacy, socio-economic status, occupational prestige and academic in the process of rendering career guidance to students.
In addition, Emotional intelligence and career selfefficacy interventions should be utilized by guidance counselors, educationalists, government and school owners in helping secondary school students to discover their career maturity level and further boost it.
Students should also make a conscious effort to explore and understand their emotional intelligence and career selfefficacy in relation to career maturity.