Adventitious Versus Purposive Occupational Choice: A Reply to Katz

Katz's criticism of our study presents an opportunity for a further clarification of the adventitious and purposive theories of occupational recruitment.1 Katz and Martin's study of nursing students takes a situational approach to occupational choice wherein a variety of external factors impinge on the choice.2 Our approach stresses the negotiated nature of career choice, which is seen as involving a compromise between occupational aspirations and opportunities. The purposive strategy assumes that choices are rational compromises between factors which of themselves are not necessarily rational. To the extent that there is a direct relation between means and ends we are justified in describing a choice-process as rational in the Weberian sense of the term. Adventitious choice of occupation would seem to be involved when careers are of temporary duration or subordinate to other considerations. Recruitment to female professions provides an excellent example of this phenomena as Davis and Olesen suggest: ". . . the middle-class girl's identification with and commitment to a career choice, when she makes one, is almost of necessity more ambivalent, conflict-laden and tentative than it is for her male counterpart."3 In predominantly male professions, such as medicine, dentistry, law, engineering, etc., choice can be more readily made in terms of "career relevant" considerations such as economic resources, cost of training, occupational preferences, and future rewards. In essence, Katz's methodological critique consists of a veritable barrage of imputed motives, projected shortcomings, and shibboleths. Katz criticizes us for use of attitudinal rather than behavioral data. However, we assume that mental activity is a form of social behavior which may for some purposes be a better predictor of social action than more visible forms of behavior. What Katz implies are academic expedients are in fact necessary elements of our research approach. For example, Katz suggests that predental students are not proper subjects for determining patterns of career choice. Yet, these students are at the closest point to the actual decision making, as represented by enrollment in a pre-professional curriculum. Dental students and practicing dentists are less preferable from a temporal standpoint since retrospective distortions may color their recollections to an unknown degree. Questions of who actually becomes a dentist and what are the behavior and attitudes of dental students are related but nevertheless separate issues. We are presently involved in a longitudinal study of the recruitment, socialization and career patterns of successive cohorts of dental students. Analysis of data on dental students at three schools indicate similar patterns of recruitment to that of the predental sample, lending further substantiation to the purposive theory of occupational choice for male professionals. While our attempt to show the influences of background factors such as social mobility, occupational exposure, etc., upon career-choice perspective is certainly open to further development, we leave it to interested readers to determine which theoretical position is more amenable to empirical testing. 1 Fred E. Katz, "A Comment on 'The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry,"' Social Forces, 45 (September 1966), p. 120; and Basil Sherlock and Alan Cohen, "The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry," Social Forces, 44 (March 1966), pp. 303-313. 2 Fred E. Katz and Harry W. Martin, "Career Choice Processes," Social Forces, 41 (December 1962), pp. 149-154. 3 Fred Davis and Virginia L. Olesen, "Initiation into a Women's Profession: Identity Problems in the Status Transition of Coed to Student Nurse," Sociometry, 26 (March 1963), p. 92.