Longitudinal data on college Seniors are employed in an effort to determine whether occupational values determine career choice, or career choice determines value. or both. Cross-lagged partial correlations are used to assess the direction of causation in the year following college graduation with the result that values are found to be "stronger" for three careers and career is found to be "stronger" for four careers. The possibility that values may be relatively weaker for those careers requiring greater undergraduate specialization is considered. The major conclusion is that there is substantial variation across careers in the nature of the relationship between career choice and values.
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Ralph Underhill (1966) studied this question.