Gender and Grade Interaction on Career Decision Factors among South African High School Students Dr Nicholas Chileshe 1 Faculty of Development of Society Built Environment Division Sheffield Hallam University, UK N.Chileshe@shu.ac.uk Dr Theo Haupt Southern African Built Environment Research Centre, Faculty of Engineering Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa Hauptt@cput.ac.za Abstract This study sought to investigative the interaction effects of grade and gender of high school students on the factors impacting their career decisions and whether the main effects were significant. Literature review is used to identify relevant factors which are then incorporated into the design of the survey instrument. The questionnaire is administered via a postal survey and information was collected from 1091 high school students in the Western Cape Province. Survey response data is subjected to descriptive statistics and subsequently parametric tests and analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA). The findings suggest that there are significant differences among grades on the importance of career decision factors with students in Grade 11 rating the following factors of salary, working conditions and life long learning higher than those in Grades 10 and 12. On the other hand students in Grade 12 or "matric" reported "skills shortage" as the factor influencing them to enter the Construction Industry while those in Grade 10 were more influenced by "family tradition". The research limitation of the study is that the cross-sectional data made it difficult to generalise the findings. The findings are of particular importance to high school teachers and guidance counsellors who influence career choices amongst high school students in encouraging students in the final grade or "matric" in choosing the correct career within the Construction Industry irrespective of the grade or gender. The study has originality in that there are few studies which try to investigate the interacting effects (gender * grade) on the career decision-making process of high school students in an African environment. This study contributes to bridging that gap. Keywords: Career Decision Process, Construction Industry, Grade and Gender Differences, South Africa Introduction The main objectives of this paper are to investigate the interactive effects of grade and gender of high school students on the factors impacting their career decisions within the South African Construction 1 The author is also an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPuT), Cape Town, South Africa.