Effects of a career planning correspondence course on the career indecision of high school students

Purpose. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a self-help career intervention, the Career Planning: Charting Your Future correspondence course, on the career development of high school students. A variation of this intervention, the Career Planning course plus phone line contact with a Career Planning instructor, was also investigated. The secondary purpose was to investigate career indecision as a measure of change and as a predictor of differential effects on vocational identity and satisfaction with the course.; Procedure. The subjects included 126 male and female Missouri high school students enrolled in two correspondence courses, Career Planning: Charting Your Future and Project Self-Discovery, at the University of Missouri's Center for Independent Study. The Career Planning students were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions with pre and post measures of the My Vocational Situation (MVS) and Career Decision Scale (CDS). Each student also completed the Career Planning Final Questionnaire. The no treatment control group enrolled in a non-career related correspondence course, Project Self-Discovery, completed pre and post measures of the MVS and CDS.; Findings. Significant decreases in career indecision were found for those students exposed to the experimental conditions while no significant change occurred for the control group. Level of career indecision did not prove to be a useful predictor of change in MVS Identity Scale scores nor did level of satisfaction with career planning interventions.; Conclusions. The results of this study suggested the following conclusions: (1) Career Planning: Charting Your Future can significantly decrease high school students' career indecision. (2) The study does not lend support for utilization of the phone line in conjunction with the career course to decrease career indecision. (3) There is no support for using level of career indecision (high/low) to predict differential affects on vocational identity or satisfaction with career planning intervention.