An Assessment of the effect of vocational exploration on career

decision making

Miller, Mark J. (1994). An assessment of the effect of vocational exploration on career decision making. Journal of

Employment Counseling, 31, 137-143.

Presented By…

Margaux ElliottMariesa Duggan and

Palmer Thorton

Past Research

• It is not quite understood how much of a person’s indecisiveness is due to a delay of development and how much is due to chronic personality problems.

• Personality traits such as anxiety have been linked to career indecisiveness.

Present Study

• Goal - To determine if the vocational activity created any decisiveness towards career interests.

• Hypothesis - “after receiving a traditional vocational

exploration activity as a treatment, both treatment and control group decisive college students will remain congruent in pre- and post test interest inventory scores”.

Participants

• 175 students qualified initially for the study• Researchers retained only those students

who said they were career decided• All students were college freshmen

enrolled in an English composition class• Treatment, N=39• Control, N=40

Design and Procedure

• Researchers initiated the study by giving the American College Testing Interest Inventory (ACT II) to both groups.

• They used the ACT II for both pre- and post testing of interest

Treatment Group• Participated in career exploration activity

- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for personality and the Strong Interest Inventory for career interests.

• Results were then explained and the subjects were asked to write a “cause” and “effect” inference paper focusing on their test results.

• Test scores were to be looked at as “effects” and participants were told to write about what they believed to be the “causes” in them that resulted in their personality and their vocational interest profiles.

Results• Multivariate F ratio

- yielded a probability of .03• Univariate F ratios

- yielded probabilities of .018 and .001• Pre-post Incongruencies

- the mean distance between the treatment groups pre and post ACT II are 5.63 (treatment) and 3.21 (control)

at a .001 confidence interval.- angle difference is 199.2 (treatment) and 194.3 (control)

at .04 confidence interval.- Change in response consistency between each group is

not significant• Significance of pre-post interest incongruence

- initial pretest interest incongruence was insignificant- posttest scores for incongruence of the distance between

pre- and post test scores were significant.

Discussion

• The treatment did have an impact on decided students

- changed their interest statement after the treatment.

- treatment led to uncertainty

Discussion

• Lack of uncertainty in the control group refutes the initial hypothesis

• Study supports previous findings on the role of anxiety in career decision

Suggestions to Solve this personality/career issue…

• Stimulating students with more information, without providing counseling and debriefing proves to be a destabilizing activity for students.

• Cooperative education courses could allow students more time and structure to validate their ideas about their future.

Critical Review• Three interesting points made by the author…

- Indecisive participants who remained undecided across all times and the measurements consistently scored highest on low self-esteem and poor identity formation.

- This study supports past findings on the role of trait anxiety in career indecision. Supports the trend of defining chronic career indecision as related to unresolved personality issues.

- Confronting one’s personality core is the fundamental work of career decision making. Anxiety reduction via psychotherapy effectively reduced career indecisiveness.

 

 

Critical Review

• Area of confusion…-The only thing that we found unclear was

the chart shown at the end of the journal article. We thought that the researcher’s mapping scheme was very confusing to read and understand. Contextually when you read about the results they make sense, but when you look at the graph they are very unclear.

Thank You!!!