Access Type

Open Access Dissertation

Date of Award

January 2014

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Counselor Education

First Advisor

George P. Parris

Abstract

The principal aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a career-planning course for college students who were undecided on a major or want to change or confirm their major at community college. The career-planning course was designed to assist students in becoming more aware of themselves and career options. From this study, the career-planning course assisted students in improving their career decision-making self-efficacy. A reduction in career decision-making difficulties for students was seen in this study. A quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group research design was used for this study. To determine if the experimental and control group were similar on the pretest scores for the five subscales measuring career decision-making self-efficacy, t-tests for two independent samples were used. The results indicated that the two groups differed on three of the subscales. Career indecisiveness was measured using three categories that encompassed 10 subcategories. The mean scores for each category and subcategory were compared between the experimental and control groups using t-tests for two independent samples. The results of these analyses indicated that one category and the four subcategories differed significantly between the two groups. Due to these findings of statistically significant differences on some of the scales, the analysis used to test the hypotheses that compared the experimental and control groups at the end of the intervention was multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). Differences on career decision-making self-efficacy between the experimental and control groups for the first MANCOVA were not statistically significant. The second MANCOVA tested for differences between the experimental and control groups measuring career indecisiveness and the results were not statistically significant for the three categories, but were statistically significant for the 10 subcategories. The between subjects effects for the 10 subcategories were examined and two subcategories were significant. The pretest and posttest scores for the experimental group were compared using t-tests for dependent samples and all five subscales measuring career self-efficacy were statistically significant. One category and five subcategories were statistically significant for career indecisiveness when the experimental group was compared using t-tests for dependent samples. Recommendations for future research were offered.

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