Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology / Kenneth F. Hughey / This study examined the impact of two career interventions on the dysfunctional career thoughts (DCTs) and vocational identity (VI) of 55 high school seniors. Research has shown an inverse relationship between levels of DCTs and VI. One intervention was based on the Cognitive Information Processing approach (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991; Peterson, Sampson, Lenz, & Reardon, 2002; Peterson, Sampson, Reardon, & Lenz, 1996; Sampson, Reardon, Peterson, & Lenz, 2004) and incorporated Improving Your Career Thoughts: A Workbook for the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI workbook; Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1996c) and the Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, 1994). The second intervention employed only the SDS. A control group used neither activity. Levels of DCTs and VI were assessed pre-intervention and post-intervention using the Career Thoughts Inventory (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1996a) and the Vocational Identity scale of My Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980a). Earlier studies indicated improvements in levels of dysfunctional career thinking after CIP-based interventions (e.g., Kilk, 1998; Morano, 2005; Reed, 2006), but no previous studies employed the complete CTI workbook. Additional studies (e.g., Loughead & Black, 1990; Mau,1999; Wiggins, 1987) indicated that levels of vocational identity could be increased by using the SDS as an intervention. The combined use of the CTI workbook and SDS produced significant improvements in all five measures of DCTs and VI. It was also shown that use of the SDS as a stand-alone intervention did improve levels of VI, but not to the extent of the improvements shown by combined use of the SDS and CTI workbook. Use of the SDS as a stand-alone intervention did not produce improvements in levels of DCTs. The control group, which employed neither the CTI workbook nor the SDS, unexpectedly showed significant improvements in scores for two CTI scales which may have been due to the influence of confounding variables.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between racial identity development and career thoughts for Black seniors at an urban high school. The available population was 557 Black senior students at a high school in Orange County, Florida. With respect to this population, socioeconomic status, influences on career interest, parental level of education, parental occupations, post-secondary intentions, and plans to take the SAT or ACT were some of the specific demographic variables that were analyzed. Results from a variety of simple regression analyses revealed significant positive relationships between Black seniors' perceptions of their racial identity development and their career thoughts. By way of simple regression analysis, the five variables (domains) of the Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale were analyzed in relation to the three variables (domains) of the Career Thoughts Inventory and demographic variables. With the exception of the internalization stage of Black racial identity development, statistically significant relationships were found between each of the stages of Black racial identity development (preencounter, encounter, and immersion /emersion) and the measures of the Career Thoughts Inventory (decision making confusion, external conflict, commitment anxiety). Results of the data suggest that individuals in the preencounter, encounter, and immersion /emersion stages of Black racial identity development will have moderate to high scores with respect to decision making confusion, external conflict, commitment anxiety, and negative career thoughts overall. In other words, the less developed one's racial identity, the greater the likelihood of a higher degree of negative thoughts about career and career choice. As well, the results, for the most part, supported the proposed hypotheses. This initial investigation should be replicated using a large sample size and other statistical analyses in order to ascertain more and in order to more accurately determine the nature of the relationship between racial identity development and career development for Blacks.