The purpose of this study was to present the strategies for promoting the employment of individuals with deafness by examining the variables related to their career choice. The following research questions were formulated:
1. What are the socio-demographic and disability-related characteristics of the clients with deafness at the sign language interpretation centers?
2. What have they experienced in the process of obtaining and maintaining jobs?
3. Are their socio-demographic and disability-related characteristics associated with their preferred types of jobs?
4. Are their socio-demographic and disability-related characteristics associated with the conditions for their career choice?
5. Do their socio-demographic and disability-related characteristics predict the values for their job choice?
The responses from a total of 508 persons with deafness, the clients at the sign language interpretation centers, were finally analyzed for this study. The participants were selected by stratified cluster sampling (e.g., metropolitan area as a stratum and the center as a cluster) and by recruiting 20 participants from each of the 37 centers.
A questionnaire was designed to collect data for addressing the research questions. The instrument included the items regarding the following: (a) socio-demographic and disability-related characteristics of the participants, (b) job-seeking and on-the-job experiences, (c) types of jobs preferred, (d) conditions for selecting specific jobs, and (e) values affecting their career choice.
The respondents consisted of about 57% of males and 43% of females. Their age ranged in years from 19 to 77 (an average of 41). They comprised 36% of high school graduates and 22% of graduates from junior colleges. More than half the participants were protestants and married. A third of the participants were the recipients of the public stipends. Eighty-one percent of the participants had degree two of hearing impairment and the remaining degree one of hearing impairment. More than half the participants had their onset of hearing impairment before age three.
Eighty-five percent of the respondents had job experiences, whereas the remaining did not. Those with no job experiences did not pursue jobs due to the possibility of the exclusion from the public support system and most of them relied on sign language interpreters for information on jobs. The respondents with job experiences were mostly employed in manual labor jobs. The sign language interpreters, not the public officers at the offices for promoting the employment of persons with disabilities, were reported to help the respondents obtain jobs.
Their preferred types of jobs were, for the most part, equally distributed across the nine categories of standard jobs with professional jobs preferred the most. Gender, age, level of education, marital status, residential area, recipient status of public stipend, and primary media of communication, respectively, was significantly associated with their preferred type of jobs.
The respondents perceived the individual abilities as the most important for choosing jobs. Degree of hearing impairment was significantly associated with the perceived condition for job selection. None of the other socio-demographic and disability-related variables was associated with the perception.
The values affecting the determination of jobs were found to be in the order of disability awareness, salary, availability of sign language interpretation services, job conditions, job stability, aptitude and prospect, authority, and religious lives. Different sets of variables were found to predict their value for determining jobs.