Abstract
<p>Thirty eight deaf students (N = 38) participated in an exploratory study of interest differentiation addressing two research questions: (a) do factors related to vocational maturity predict differentiation at different points in time, and (b) does interest differentiation increase with age? Scores for differentiation predictors and levels were created from archival data collected when the students were 14 to 18 years old. Information from a contemporary interview when the students were 24 to 33 years old was used for later estimates of the same variables. Findings indicated that differentiation could be predicted from measures such as achievement, mental ability, and aspiration, although different variables were significant at different time periods. Unfortunately, deaf students lagged behind their hearing peers in level of differentiation and showed no significant gain in differentiation from adolescence to young adulthood.</p>
