Compared with White persons, Black/African American persons in the United States continue to experience high rates of educational deficits and employment stagnation as well as lower college graduation rates. This study examined the influences on Black/African American and White college students' high school completion, college attendance, and…

A practical procedure which is based on decision and information processing theories is presented to assist clients of career counselors. The proposed procedure, which is derived from the sequential elimination approach, considers the individual's limited cognitive and material resources and provides specific guidelines aimed at facilitating…

Describes Career Decision-Making Course, designed to help high school students develop decisional attitudes and competencies that increase readiness to deal with career choice tasks and facilitate behavioral responses that meet these tasks. Reports results from field test of course in which, compared to controls, tenth grade students who…

Examined career indecision by performing cluster analysis on data from 155 high school students on five variables: state anxiety, trait anxiety, locus of control, identity, and career indecision. Results support hypothesis that different forms of career indecision exist, and confirm earlier concepts about importance of anxiety in differentiating…

Explored how students choose careers, their attitudes toward vocational education, and whether they would consider enrolling in nontraditional vocational education program. Findings from 5,937 ninth graders, and an analysis of the continuing disproportionate enrollments by sex in vocational programs, suggest that nontraditional vocational…

Investigated difficulties experienced by gifted youth and factors they consider as they make career decisions. Conducted interviews with 30 gifted adolescents at three strategic decision-making points. Found 20 factors that subjects identified as important to their career decisions. Factors clustered into five groups: sensitivity to others'…

Sampled high school students (N=192) to determine whether the Self-Directed Search (SDS) and Self-Directed Search-Form Easy (SDS-E) are alternate forms for learning-disabled high school students. Found initial evidence that the SDS-E may be more appropriate than is the SDS for use with learning disabled high school students. (Author/ABB)

Examined relationship between composition by sex (single-sex versus coeducational) of women's (n=274) high school and college environments and sex of their selected influential teachers and their self-efficacy in traditional or nontraditional careers. Found no main effects for composition by sex of institution, or sex of influential teachers, nor…

Examined the shifts in occupational plans of adolescent women during the decade of the 1970s in contrast with those of men, studying general trends into higher status and out of lower status major occupational categories. Compared entry into male-dominant and exit from female-dominant occupations between students graduating in 1972 and 1980,…

Administered Counseling Form of Career Maturity Inventory Attitude Scale and measure of appropriateness of career choices to 83 Black and 239 White high school students. White students scored significantly higher than Blacks in Involvement, Independence, and Compromise in Career Decision Making and on Appropriateness of Career Choices. (Author/NB)