This study sought to find out the attitudes of students in two high schools towards technical and vocational education (TVE) placement and the implications for their career choices. The main study sample comprised 178 grade 11 students in five vocational options from a rural and from an urban upgraded high school in Jamaica. Upgraded high schools are vocationally oriented with the objective of preparing students for the world of work and ensuring a greater awareness of job and career fields.

Measurement problems pervade most data obtained on questionnaires. One important class of problems seems to reside in the nature of measurement, and may be identified through a study of a definition of measure­ment. For the purposes of this paper a useful definition has been stated by Caws [3, p.5].