this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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[–] echolalia@lemmy.ml 53 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

18+52+37+47+56=210 for China. Each child could pick up to 3 answers. The average number of jobs the Chinese children picked was 2.

For USA/UK the average was about 1. Very few children selected more than one answer.

That's weird. What a weird poll. Were there only 5 possible choices? I would have told you I wanted to be a veterinarian at that age, if I answered at all. (I did not become a vet, I became a failure lmao)

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 19 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I wanted to be an electrical engineer, then I saw all the math and settled for electrician, then I saw all the math and settled for Janitor

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Unfortunate, i know lots of engineers who never learned math.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

I wanted to be a naval pilot engineer at four. I’m colorblind, terrified of heights, not fond of authority, sloppy, and scatterbrained as hell. It’s quite possibly the worst possible job for me. To be fair, part of the reason was that I hated the word “bellybutton” and thought anyone who said ”navel” instead had the right idea, so it’s not like I really understood that part of it.

[–] Redex68@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago

It's also possible that these aren't all of the available answers and they only selected the ones they thought are interesting.

[–] ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It says all the children were given an option to pick up to 3 answers. Given the small sample size, it's likely there were questioned by the same person and that person didn't convey that to children properly.

Or they are all very focused on only 1 path.

[–] echolalia@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago

It says all the children were given an option to pick up to 3 answers.

Mmhmm, I also noticed that, which is why it's the second sentence in my post.

Given the small sample size

It's a survey of 3,000? It's still possible that only one person was giving the survey to the Chinese students.

But yeah, it does look like the Chinese students got different instructions or had them explained differently or something. Just a strange poll.