The Relationship of Parental Marital Status to Measures of the Cognitive Vocational Maturity of Delinquents

The study compared the differences in scores on each of the six areas of The Cognitive Vocational Maturity Test (CVMT) (Westbrook, Parry-Hill, and Woodbury, 1972) between two groups of delinquents: parents living together and parents divorced. A random sample of 42 adjudicated delinquents was administered the CVMT, and parental marital status was obtained from school social records. Analyses of variance and F tests indicated significant differences (p ≤ .01) between the groups on the CVMT scores of Fields of Work, Work Conditions, Educational Requirements, Attributes Required, and Duties. Results suggest that delinquents with divorced parents possess less knowledge about careers and their attributes than do delinquents whose parents remained married. The results lend support to the idea that vocational maturity is influenced by aversive parent-child relationships in the families of delinquents.