A Career Development Workshop for Emotionally Disadvantaged Students

The investigation described in this study was a two part procedure which attempted to answer the general question: "Do the constructs of indecision and indecisiveness adequately describe disadvantaged individuals who experience difficulties in making a career decision?" The sampling was from a population of disadvantaged high school and college students. The first part of the study, which tested the effectiveness of the University of Utah Counseling Center's Career Planning Workshop as a treatment for vocational undecidedness in a disadvantaged population, did not yield statistically reliable differences between the experimental and control groups. The second segment of the study was an exploratory rather than definitive investigation of the general question given above. The subjects had all experienced the Career Planning Workshop; one group showed an increase in degree of career decidedness subsequent to workshop treatment, while the second group did not show an increase. Both groups were given the Vocational Development Inventory and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Although differences between the groups were not statistically reliable, the group which had increased in decidedness exhibited greater vocational maturity and less state- and trait-anxiety than the group which had not shown an increase in decidedness. References are included. (Author/SES)