Age and Gender Differences in Brazilian Adolescents' Vocational Interests

Filip De Fruyt ¹ Ana Carla Crispim ^2* Gustavo Henrique Martins ^2,3 Rodolfo Ambiel ⁴ Joyce Scheirlinckx ¹ Oliver P John ⁵

• ¹ Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium
• ² Instituto Ayrton Senna, São Paulo, Brazil
• ³ Sao Francisco University, Braganca Paulista, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• ⁴ Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
• ⁵ University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States

This study examines age and gender differences in a large cross-sectional sample of Brazilian middle and high school students (Total N = 234.857) who were administered 18REST-2 (Martins et al., 2025), a brief RIASEC measure used in large-scale educational monitoring. Paralleling meta-analytic findings by Su et al. (2009), boys scored substantively higher on Realistic, whereas girls scored higher on Social and Artistic interests. Enterprising interests were greater among older adolescents, plateauing after middle school, in line with meta-analytic work by Hoff et al. (2018), but also Conventional interests were greater across adolescence, counter to meta-analytic patterns. Similarities and differences with meta-analytic findings are discussed considering longer versus brief measures to assess RIASEC, the different cultures in which studies are conducted (Brazil versus mainly Western countries) and the more recent nature of the present data reflecting the post-pandemic era.