The effect of structure and locus of control on the career decision making of community college students

Counselors and psychotherapists have urged for a number of years that the interaction between client and treatment characteristics be examined. All clients are not expected to benefit equally from one particular style of treatment. Although client-method interactions have been investigated in therapy contexts, little has been done to examine the effects of interaction on career decision making. The present study was concerned with the interaction between a client variable, locus of control, and a treatment variable, group structure. Subjects were fifty-five community college students enrolled in a career development course. Two intervention styles were designed; one stressing a structured, systematic approach, the other emphasizing self and environmental exploration in an unstructured context. Subjects were classified as internals or externals using Rotter's Internal-External Scale. Career decision making was assessed both before and after treatment by the Assessment of Career Decision Making (ACDM). The ACDM quantifies the stages of decision making hypothesized by Tiedeman and O'Hara (1963). Results indicated that the mean ACDM decision making task scores for college major and occupation were higher after treatment than before, regardless of intervention structure. Comparison of the two intervention styles, however, revealed that the means for unstructured groups on the College Major Decision Making Task were higher than those in the structured group (p < .08). Investigation of the levels within each decision making task uncovered that an interaction between locus of control and group structure had effected the scores of the Clarification stage of the College Major Decision Making Task and of the Choice stage of the Occupational Decision Making Task. While significant (p < .06) the interaction was in an unexpected direction. Internals tended to have high decision scores after exposure to the structured intervention and externals tended to have higher scores after having been in unstructured groups. Additional analyses pointed out that the importance an individual places on making decisions is the best predictor of post intervention decision making scores.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ed. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Counseling and Student Personnel Services

Department dc:contributor.department

Counseling and Student Personnel Services

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1979

Author dc:creator

• Furbish, Dale Scott

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/109933

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/109933