The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the chronological age of one's diagnosis and dysfunctional career thoughts among college students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. What is currently known about the timing of ADHD diagnosis and how it could potentially impact or have an effect on one's career thoughts as it pertains to making educational and career decisions is nonexistent. Given the increase of ADHD among college students, it was worth exploring the impact that age of one's diagnosis has on career thoughts. / Ph. D.

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.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Special Education / Kenneth F. Hughey / This study investigated the impact of a seven-session career intervention in a First Year Experience course on the dysfunctional career thoughts, locus of control, and career decision self-efficacy of underprepared college students. The career intervention was based on the cognitive information processing approach to career decision making (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991; Peterson, Sampson, Reardon, & Lenz, 1996; Reardon, Lenz, Sampson, & Peterson, 2000; Sampson, Reardon, Peterson, & Lenz, 2004) and utilized the CTI workbook (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1996b). Participants in the study were full-time freshmen enrolled in remedial academic courses at a small, open-enrollment institution. The study was a Nonequivalent Control Group design with delayed posttest. Ten hypotheses were identified and tested. The Career Thoughts Inventory, the Rotter IE Scale, and the Career Decision Self-Efficacy-Short Form were administered at pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. ANCOVA was used to analyze differences between the mean scores by group for each of the dependent variables. In addition, dependent t-tests were used to examine the differences between the mean scores within group for each of the dependent variables. Results of this study indicated that underprepared students who participated in the career intervention significantly improved dysfunctional career thoughts on all variables from pretest to posttest. Further, improvement in dysfunctional career thoughts was maintained four weeks after the intervention. Significant differences were also found at posttest between the treatment and control groups for CTI Total and Decision-Making Confusion. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between dysfunctional career thinking and locus of control, indicating the participants with higher levels of dysfunctional career thoughts also had a more external locus of control. Locus of control was not significantly different from pretest to posttest in the treatment group; however, locus of control did become more internal following the intervention. At delayed posttest, locus of control of the treatment group was not significantly different from Rotter’s (1966) normative sample while the control group continued to be significantly more external than the normative sample. While career decision self-efficacy was not significantly different from pretest to posttest, students’ scores indicated confidence in their ability to perform career tasks.