The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of internal vs. external goal setting on the performance and satisfaction of communication skills training participants. / The subjects consisted of 41 male and 33 female undergraduate students enrolled in Introduction to Management and Introduction to Marketing courses at St. Peter's College. Following the completion and scoring of the Discriminating Helping Skills Pretest, which measures subjects ability to discriminate between effective and non-effective helping responses, subjects were either assigned training goals (external goal setting condition), selected their own goals (internal goal setting condition), or did not participate in a formal goal setting procedure (control). Subjects then viewed a 20 minute videotape which is designed to help students learn to discriminate effective vs. non-effective responses (Carkhuff, 1981). After completion of the video, subjects were given the Discriminating Helping Skills Postest to measure performance and a Semantic Differential Scale to determine satisfaction with the video. / Results obtained in this study indicated that the satisfaction and performance of subjects were not significantly different at the.05 level with respect to the goal setting procedures in which they participated. Post-hoc analyses attempted to explain the findings of non-significance. These post-hoc results suggested that a possible lack of interest due to demographic characteristics, specifically race and major, may have contributed to the obtained findings. Given that methodological limitations may have contributed to the non-significant results obtained in this study, it is recommended that future research attempt to study these hypotheses with appropriate modifications in the research design. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3627. / Major Professor: James P. Sampson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77902 |
Contributors | Levy, Mitchell A., Florida State University |
Source Sets | Florida State University |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Text |
Format | 168 p. |
Rights | On campus use only. |
Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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