Previous investigators have indicated that low socio-economic students have difficulty experiencing success on tests heavily loaded with verbal material. Differences in personality characteristics between students of high and low creativity have also been found. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of manifest needs and anxiety on creative thinking. The Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, which determines anxiety level, the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, which measures manifest needs, and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, which provides an index of creativity were administered to Spanish-American, Anglo-American, Negro, and Navaho high school students, who constituted the 1967 Upward Bound population at Utah State University. The total sample, composed of the four ethnic backgrounds, was administered the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The students were ranked on the basis of their total creativity score, and high and low creativity groups were extracted at the median. The results indicate that Upward Bound students are significantly higher in figural than in verbal creativity. No significant differences between high and low creativity students were found on anxiety or manifest needs, although a negative trend between anxiety and creativity was suggested.

The Information Age is revolutionizing the way we communicate, acquire knowledge, and perform work. Society is shifting from occupations rooted in industrial production to those associated with knowledge and information, requiring the development of new skills for changing occupations and updating old educational methods. Educators need to be aware of economic and social changes and have a vision for how to design career education to respond to those changes. Individuals must also be prepared to learn on their own as careers evolve and change. The training necessary to adapt to the changing career culture needs to be made available to everyone, regardless of social class and background. In order to learn how to help students prepare for life, it is necessary to understand their views on careers. There is a critical and acute need to understand the perceptions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as Upward Bound participants (identified by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the TRIO Program for low-income and first generation college students). This study used Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) to access representations of students' thinking by means of a repertory-test grid methodology. Using the traditional constructivist repertory-test method, a custom designed instrument called the WOAR (Weingarten Occupational Awareness Rep-test) was used by students in a Utah Valley State College Upward Bound group to generate constructs for personally identified occupations. These constructs provided the data for a qualitative content analysis designed to better understand how marginalized students construct careers and the world of work. The resulting analysis reflected the students' perceptions about (a) what their life experiences were, (b) what they had in common with one another, and (c) what they had in common with the rest of the population at large, in terms of career knowledge. The findings showed that the students were influenced by people they knew such as doctors, teachers, church leaders and so on, as indicated by the career choices they identified. They were also affected by their unique experiences such as identifying drug dealing and other illegal means as a way of earning money. The collective responses identified sixteen common career themes among the students.