Anxiety reduction in the vocationally undecided student

This research examined whether the anxiety associated with vocational indecision could be reduced by career exploration. Students were chosen based on their self-report for inclusion in the following categories: decided or undecided on an academic major, and decided or undecided on an occupation or career. For each of the four decision categories, ten males and ten females were included in each of the two conditions (experimental and control). Thus, 160 students were included in the study. The design was a posttest only-control group design with random assignment of students to the conditions. Students were counterbalanced on the attribute variables to control for other sources of error. The experimental group received the Self-Directed Search (SDS), "You and Your Career" pamphlet, the state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Career Decision Scale to be completed in that order. The control group received the Leisure Preference Search which served as a placebo treatment in place of the SDS and the pamphlet. A 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance procedure was used with anxiety score as the dependent measure to test a priori hypotheses. The results of the experiment indicated that the vocational exploration did not significantly lower anxiety scores in the experimental group. Results did indicate, however, that males had a significantly higher mean anxiety score compared to females, students who were undecided on a career had a significantly higher mean anxiety score compared to those students who had decided on a career, and students who were undecided on an academic major had a significantly higher mean anxiety score compared to those students who had reached a decision concerning their major. Possible reasons for these outcomes are presented and implications for future research are discussed.