The occupational work ethic of vocational students in East Tennessee

The purpose of this study was to determine, using the Occupational Work Ethic Inventory (GWEI), if there were significant differences in the work ethic of secondary vocational students categorized by occupational training area, gender, grade level, hours worked per week, and socio economic status. If significant differences were found, determining how the categories of students differed for the dimensions of the work ethic represented by the four subscales of the OWEI would be another aspect of this study. The dimensions of the work ethic measured by the subscales of the OWEI were dependable, ambitious, considerate, and cooperative. The population for this study consisted of students enrolled in secondary vocational education programs in East Tennessee. From the 35 counties designated as East Tennessee, 15 school sites located in eight counties, were randomly selected. Each school site randomly selected the occupational training classes to participate in this study. The OWEI survey was conducted over a three week period by going to each of the school sites and surveying those classes selected by the school administrators. After a brief explanation of the OWEI, students were asked to voluntarily participate in the survey by completing the survey instrument which would take less than 15 minutes to complete. Surveys were collected from each student as they were completed. The population sample consisted of the students within selected vocational classes which participated in the study. A total of 3,282 surveys were collected, but 54 respondents did not complete the forms and they were unusable resulting in a response rate of 99.98%. Partial correlation coefficients for the OWEI subscales were calculated to verify the data on each level of the independent variables were appropriate for multivariate analysis. The Hotelling-Lawley Trace, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), statistical procedure was used to test each of the five null hypotheses. The null hypotheses for research questions were all rejected at the p < .05 level.