| For a variety of reasons, higher levels of parental assertiveness have begun to impact even the basic conflicts college students encounter while in attendance. Called helicopter parenting within the popular press, these parents are described as involving themselves in the minutia of their child's college experience, engaging with university staff and faculty when any event occurs which causes the student any sort of distress. This capitulation of a student's decision-making responsibilities into the hands of their parents or other significant adults can delay major developmental educational goals for the student, including major selection, class selection, and career goals. This research sought to examine the association of the variables of parental assertiveness and over-involvement to career choice self-efficacy in junior-level college students who currently attend one of two public institutions in the state of Alabama. The study recorded 193 participants' responses to survey questions from two different surveys: the Parental Attachment Questionnaire and the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form, on each of the variables. These responses were correlated to determine whether there might be a long-term effect to career choice satisfaction from overly assertive parenting behaviors. For each of the three research questions, a series of Pearson r correlations, Linear Regression Analyses and Independent Samples t-tests were performed in order to examine the degree of relationship between the variables. In each case, low or extremely low correlation coefficients were demonstrated. During analysis, statistically insignificant results were occasionally obtained which could not sufficiently answer some of the research questions. Overall, the null hypothesis was accepted. |
