Expanding Horizons: A Randomized Controlled Trial on Adolescents’ Career Information Acquisition

Abstract

We implement a randomized controlled trial to investigate whether students in lower-secondary school more effectively acquire information about potential careerpaths if this information is preceded by a task that allows students to explore their own interests and the career information is presented in personalized order. We find thatself-exploration in combination with the personalized display increases students’ information acquisition. Students also read about more diverse career paths and shift theirfocus from occupations that require university education towards those that require a high-school degree.

Keywords: Information Acquisition, Career guidance, education, Field experiment