Do Holland’s Personality Types RIASEC Predict Students’ Choice of Academic Programs in Cameroon’s State Universities

Students' choice of major field of study in universities in Cameroon continues to be influenced by a variety of factors including personality factors, home and parental factors, socio economic factors, environmental factors, and cultural factors. This study was carried out to investigate whether Holland's personality types RIASEC predict students' choice of academic programs in Cameroon's State Universities. The universities studied were the University of Bamenda and the University of Buea. The correlational survey design was used for this study to determine whether or not students' personality typologies predicted their choice of major fields of study. The sample size for this study comprised 399 male and female second and fourth year students in the Universities of Buea and Bamenda. Out of the sample size of 369 students, 264 of them came from the University of Buea and 132 from the University of Bamenda. Out of 264 students sampled from the University of Buea, 90 were male and 174 were female while for University of Bamenda, 72 were male and 60 were female, giving a total male student respondent population of 162 and a total female student respondent population of 264. The sample was selected both purposively and randomly. Findings from the study revealed that 28.3 of the students actually changed their program of study to more congruent ones. Statistically, findings showed that students' personality type significantly predict their choice of program Chi Square=1038.237, df=255, P=0.000, 0.05 with a high explanatory power of the model 93.3 Cox and Snell =0.933 . analysis showed that Realistic personality, Investigative personality, Artistic personality, Social personality, Enterprising personality and Conventional personality significantly influenced students' choice of program with P values all 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis that states that Holland's personality interest types significantly predict students' choice of programs in Cameroon's state universities was accepted. Eyombo Marie Ndzenge | Ngoran Mathew Banlanjo "Do Holland's Personality Types (RIASEC) Predict Students' Choice of Academic Programs in Cameroon's State Universities?" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-4 , June 2021, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.compapers/ijtsrd41163.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.comhumanities-and-the-arts/psychology/41163/do-holland's-personality-types-riasec-predict-students'-choice-of-academic-programs-in-cameroon's-state-universities/eyombo-marie-ndzenge