This is a descriptive consideratio...

This is a descriptive consideration in an area significantly lacking validation. The focus of the research was the work values held from mortuary science students from 3 educational programs in the Midwest. The Values Scale (D Nevill & D Super 1989) was used to measure the career-related values of a sample cluster of 116. According to participants' scores, the 5 subscales of Economic Security, Achievement, Personal disentanglement Ability Utilization, and Economic Rewards were the highest ranking. Work values were examined by means of gender, race, and other demographics.

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Studies investigating career values and related implications for career counselors have been below way for many years (Roe & Ester 1999) There have been efforts to examine work values upon an international scale (Sverko, 1999) and at gender (Richmond, 1985), race (Walsh et al., 1996) and occupation (Hutchison, All, Loving, & Nishikawa, 2001) Work values have been shown to affect career choice (Judge & Bretz 1992) and influence do job-work satisfaction (Brown, 2002). Studies in work values have helped career counselors assist clients interested in exploring particular piece of work clusters and the values associated with those clusters. Occasionally, researchers have focused investigations upon the work-related values of a particular vocation. As interdisciplinary researchers, we culled to contribute to the literature onward work values by examining the customary values of mortuary science students

Attempts to investigate the values and orientations of prospective mortuary science observers have been limited. Cahill (1999) escorted an ethnographic study exploring the enculturalization proces of mortuary science scholars to the funeral service profession. Schell and Zinger (1985) explored self-actualization, do job-work satisfaction, and commitment of Ontario, Canada, funeral directors. The funeral service literature is abounding with trade articles describing shortages of employee (Hatfield, 2001; Taylor, 1999) employee turnover (Tobias, 1999) and educational standards (Griffith & Smith, 1997; Taylor, 2002) However, the majority of these articles are opinion pieces with little or no documented support or empirical data. To date, there has been real limited research in the area of the values associated with mortuary science work.

Unlike many academically oriented undergraduate programs, mortuary science scholars engage in experiential activities completely through their educational program. It is possible that these practical experiences require a unique risk of values. Accordingly, we disentangleed two research questions: What are the dominant work values of mortuary science students? and What are the similarities and differences of these work values when inflection for sex age, family work history, and ethnicity are considered? For the project of this research, our operational definition of values parallels Super's (1995) conceptualization in that values are physical (extrinsic) or psychological (intrinsic) originates that affect one's motivation to work and influence one's career-related goals.

Method

Participants

Participants in the inquiry were mortuary science students (N = 116) from three mortuary science programs in the Midwest. The mean age of the participants was 2616 years, with a standard deviation of 72 years and a range from 18 to 49 years. The sample collection consisted of 16.4% community body students, 26.7% university students, and 569% private program observers Individuals selecting funeral service as a next to the first career constituted 36.2% of the sample arrange whereas 63.8% of the scholars reported that this was their first career decision. The distribution of the sample dispose mirrored the national norms of funeral service education regarding sex (53.4% women and 46.6% men in the sample assemblage compared with 50.2% women and 498% men in the national group) and race/ethnicity (629% Caucasian, 266% African American, and 69% Hispanic in the sample assign places to and 59.9% Caucasian, 31.54% African American, and 60% Hispanic in the national group; American Board of Funeral Service Education, 2002) (Only data from the three largest racial/ethnic subgroup were used.)

Instrument

The Values Scale (VS; Nevill & Super 1989) is a 105-item questionnaire that measures 21 values. Items are answered by dint of using a Likert-type scale. Each value is measured on five questions, with the scale ranging from 1 (little or no importance) to 4 (very important). The instrument is written at an eighth-grade reading flush and takes approximately 30 to 45 minutes to undivided The instrument's reliability coefficients for body students are between r = 65 and 87 and trial items have demonstrated validity when compared with other popular values scales (Harmon, 1988) Because of the lower reliability scores (r < 70) forward the Ability Utilization, Life pattern and Personal Development subscales, a more critical analysis should be used when evaluating accrues related to these constructs.

Procedure