The Relationship Between Participation In Career Exploration Activities And High School Graduation

Many high schools in the United States offer programs to expose students to careers through job shadowing, internships, career fairs, and other activities that fall under the umbrella of career exploration. Career exploration in high schools may, by exposing students to careers, encourage them to envision their future and finish high school in order to pursue and qualify for those careers. Using survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics' High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, this analysis uses multinomial logistic regression and propensity score matching to examine whether participation in career exploration activities is related to the likelihood of graduating from high school. Both methodologies found that participating in a job fair or career day has a small but significant relationship to a student's likelihood of receiving a high school diploma. Neither methodology found a relationship between internships and apprenticeships and high school outcomes.