Evaluating DISCOVER's effectiveness in enhancing college students' social cognitive career development.

College students (20 women, 14 men) seeking career counseling services at a university career center participated in this exploratory investigation. A 2 (DISCOVER treatment) X 2 (counseling treatment) research design was used to evaluate the individual and combined effects of DISCOVER (ACT, 1998) and counseling on participants' career decision-making self-efficacy and career decision-making attributional style. Findings revealed a significant effect of the use of DISCOVER on participants' career decision-making self-efficacy and their sense of control over the career decision-making process. Results are discussed regarding the implications for career counseling and ideas for further research in this domain.

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Social cognitive components of career decision making, such as career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) and career decision-making attributional style, have received considerable attention in recent years by career counselors and vocational psychologists who continue to provide support for the relevance of these concepts to career counseling (Betz & Luzzo, 1996; Lent & Hackett, 1987; Luzzo & Tompkins-Bjorkman, 1999). However, only a few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of career counseling interventions for helping clients become more self-efficacious regarding their career decision making or more optimistic in their attributional explanations for career-related events (e.g., Foltz & Luzzo, 1998; Foss & Slaney, 1986; Fukuyama, Probert, Neimeyer, Nevill, & Metzler, 1988; Luzzo & Day, 1999; Luzzo, Funk, & Strang, 1996; Luzzo & Taylor, 1994). Furthermore, only one of these prior investigations has evaluated the effectiveness of computer-based career planning systems (CBCPSs), in particular, as a method for enhancing clients' CDMSE (Fukuyama et al., 1988), and no studies to date have evaluated the effectiveness of CBCPSs in enhancing clients' career decision-making attributional style. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of DISCOVER (ACT, 1998), one of the most popular CBCPSs available, on the CDMSE and career decision-making attributional style of college student career counseling clients.

Self-Efficacy and Career Decision Making

Bandura (1977) defined self-efficacy as a person's beliefs regarding her or his ability to successfully perform a particular task. By understanding a person's self-efficacy expectations, a career counselor or vocational psychologist can more effectively understand and predict an individual's career-related behavior. Interventions that are designed to increase self-efficacy expectations are useful because they can increase a client's likelihood of adopting an approach rather than an avoidant disposition to-ward a given behavior, such as choosing a career or college major. Other consequences of increased self-efficacy expectations may include greater persistence despite obstacles and performance enhancement resulting from a decrease in debilitating anxiety (Bandura, 1977).

CDMSE refers to a person's belief that she or he can successfully perform the tasks involved in choosing a career. The tasks may include researching careers in a career library or on the World Wide Web, formulating short- and long-term occupational goals, and arranging personal values into a hierarchy. As expected, CDMSE is positively related to career decidedness. Persons with high levels of CDMSE are more likely to be decided about and committed to a particular career direction (Gillespie & Hillman, 1993; Mathieu, Sowa, & Niles, 1993; Taylor & Betz, 1983).

Bandura (1977) outlined four sources of information from which individuals' self-efficacy expectations can be learned and ways that these expectations can be modified. They are (a) performance accomplishments, wherein the person actually experiences the successful performance of a given behavior; (b) vicarious learning, the process of watching another person successfully perform that behavior; (c) verbal persuasion, including support from others encouraging the person's successful performance; and (d) changes in emotional states (e.g., decreases in anxiety) associated with performing a behavior.

Luzzo and Taylor (1994) found that undergraduates who received verbal persuasion and encouragement from a career counselor demonstrated significant increases in CDMSE. A more recent study by Foltz and Luzzo (1998) revealed that a career guidance workshop that incorporated anxiety reduction, verbal persuasion, exposure to role models, and discussion of personal career-related accomplishments was effective in increasing the CDMSE of nontraditional college students. CBCPSs, such as DISCOVER, also may be effective in increasing the CDMSE of users; however, only one study has examined the utility of a CBCPS in modifying CDMSE. In their investigation, Fukuyama et al. (1988) found that DISCOVER was effective in decreasing career undecidedness and increasing the CDMSE of college students.

Career Decision-Making Attributional Style

Closely related to CDMSE is the construct of career decision-making attributional style (Luzzo & Jenkins-Smith, 1998; Luzzo & Tompkins-Bjorkman, 1999). When people experience outcomes they consider important or novel, they seek explanations or attempt to make attributions regarding the causes of the outcomes. Weiner (1979, 1985, 1986) hypothesized that the attributions that a person forms directly influence her or his future motivation and performance (Perry, Hechter, Menec, & Weinberg, 1993).

Attributions can be classified on three dimensions: locus of causality, stability, and controllability (Graham, 1991; Weiner, 1986). Locus of causality (or causality) refers to the attribution of a cause as internal or external, characteristics or qualities attributable to the person (i.e., internal) or to the environmental context (i.e., external). Stability defines causes as either unchangeable (i.e., stable) or changeable (i.e., unstable). It is beneficial for most persons to conceptualize career-related outcomes (particularly outcomes that are not completely successful) as unstable and not necessarily constant or fixed (Luzzo & Tompkins-Bjorkman, 1999). Aptitude for a given task or content area is relatively stable, but effort is unstable and can vary in different situations. Controllability is the person's sense of responsibility or the ability to exert an influence upon a cause. For instance, effort, unlike luck or labor market forces, is defined as controllable because persons are believed to have control over the expenditure of effort (Graham, 1991). The most beneficial attributions, especially in terms of past failures in a given domain, are usually those that are internally caused, controllable, and changeable (i.e., unstable).

Attributional styles are frequently classified as either optimistic or pessimistic (Weiner, 1986). An optimistic attributional disposition is characterized by the attribution of behavioral outcomes to controllable, internal forces that are changeable. It is more often associated with positive expectations for the future than a pessimistic disposition, which attributes outcomes to uncontrollable, unchanging, external causes (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Spector, 1988; Weiner, 1985).

The application of Weiner's (1986) attribution theory to the career decision-making domain has led to the following propositions: Someone who believes that career decision making is susceptible to internal, dynamic, and controllable forces is likely to believe that career-related events and decisions are the result of internal factors within her or his control that can be changed with varying degrees of effort (i.e., an optimistic attributional style). A person who believes that the career decision-making process is the result of external, fixed, and uncontrollable forces will tend to believe that career-related events and decisions are the result of external factors that are out of her or his control and cannot be altered by increased effort (i.e., a pessimistic attributional style). Persons who possess a pessimistic attributional style for career decision making, compared with those who possess an optimistic attributional style, are likely to believe that they will "end up" in a particular career and that their efforts and volition are far less instrumental in career decision making (Luzzo & Jenkins-Smith, 1998; Luzzo & Tompkins-Bjorkman, 1999).

Results of several studies (e.g., Luzzo, 1993a; Taylor, 1982) have revealed that persons who believe that they possess control over the decision-making process are more likely to possess mature attitudes toward career development than persons who perceive little control over the process. Similarly, an optimistic attributional style has been found to be positively related to work satisfaction, motivation, job performance, job tenure, career exploratory behavior, career decisiveness, and career commitment (Colarelli & Bishop, 1990; Fuqua, Blum, & Hartman, 1988; Spector, 1982, 1988; Trice, Haire, & Elliot, 1989).