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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Goal Importance and Related Achievement Beliefs and Emotions during the Transition from Vocational School to Work: Antecedents and Consequences

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Abstract This study investigated the extent to which the appraisal of work-related goals in terms of their importance, level of achievement, and positive emotions would predict young adults' subsequent success in finding a job after graduation from vocational school and the extent to which their success in dealing with this transition would predict how they reappraise their goals later on. Two hundred fifty young adults who were facing a transition from vocational school to work were studied at three points: while they were still at school, 8 months after their graduation, and 1 1 2 years after graduation. They completed the revised Personal Project Analysis inventory, focusing on work-related goals, and the Work Status Questionnaire. The results showed that the more the young adults emphasized the importance of work-related goals, and the more they thought they had progressed in the achievement of such goals, the more likely they were to find a job commensurate with their education and the less likely they were to be unemployed after graduation. Moreover, those young adults who had found work that was commensurate with their education appraised their work-related goals later on as increasingly achievable and as arousing positive emotions, whereas those who had become unemployed showed a reverse pattern.