Despite growing literature of factors associated with the development of bulimia among female college students, relatively little is known of the effects of the disorder on the attainment of normative developmental tasks. To this purpose, this study investigated factors related to educational and vocational decision-making in bulimic and nonbulimic female college students. / A total of 173 female college students completed a questionnaire containing demographic, attitudinal, educational-vocational items, bulimia criterion items, and three measures of educational-vocational decision-making. The bulimia criterion items were derived from the DSM-III-Revised diagnostic criteria reported by Drenowski and Yee (1986), and modified for use in this study. A matched criterion group research design was employed. Based on the diagnostic criteria, 29 subjects were identified as bulimic, and 29 as nonbulimic from the pool of 173 respondents. / Three instruments were selected to assess educational-vocational decision-making: the Identity scale of My Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980), the Career Decision Making Styles scale of the Assessment of Career Decision Making (Buck & Daniels, 1984), and the Vocational Decision Scale (Jones & Chenery, 1980). / It was hypothesized that female college students with bulimia would significantly differ from female college student nonbulimics on factors related to educational-vocational decision-making. Results of the study suggest an association between bulimia and impaired education-vocational decision-making. / Multivariate analysis of variance yielded significant differences between groups, with bulimic female college students evidencing a more diffuse vocational identity, greater use of a dependent career decision-making style, and lesser readiness to engage in educational-vocational decision making tasks. Stepwise discriminant function analysis identified the dependent career decision-making style as the primary function in discriminating bulimic subjects from nonbulimic subjects. Based on this discriminant function, nearly 70 percent of subjects were accurately classified into their respective groups. The implications of these results for future research and counseling of individuals with bulimia are discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-05, Section: A, page: 1098. / Major Professor: Harman D. Burck. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76270 |
| Contributors | Melamed, Steven H., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 184 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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