VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS IN PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS

Introduction. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is supporting gain relevance of vocational guidance into the frame of University Education. In order to a better planning of this guidance we need to know his contents evaluating student vocational interests of each center. The aim of the study is to analyze the indicators of Psychology students vocational behavior and his evolution and comparing those results with data of another students population. Methodology. The 329 psychology students participants from the University of Salamanca (248 in the second year and 81 in the fifth) answered the questionnaire of university biodata (Rocabert, 2005). In all cases we took a significance level of alpha = 0.05 carrying out samples comparison tests using U de Mann-Whitney techniques and contingency analysis. Results: The present study found significant differences between second and fifth psychology grade students and with general university population data collected by Rocabert, Descals and Gomez (2007). In general, psychology students begin their degrees with a high level interest and motivated; they are making decisions based on the academic specialty they want to work in. However, for last year students group (fith year students) we detected a lower satisfaction in their studies, more difficulties in deciding what they want to do and a greater demand of information in order to choose the advisablest option for them. Conclusions. Despite the high motivation of psychology students, the nearer is his integration into the job market the higher is the need of guidance to help them to take decisions concerning specialization or the professional world.