Parental attachment and involvement as predictors of high school students' career thoughts
Open Access
- Author:
- Parrillo III, Albert Louis
- Graduate Program:
- Counselor Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 26, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Spencer G Niles, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jerry G Trusty, Committee Member
James Taylor Herbert, Committee Member
Edgar Paul Yoder, Committee Member - Keywords:
- career thoughts
dysfuncitonal career thinking
parental attachment
parental involvement
decision making confusion
external conflict
commitment anxiety
academic high school students
career and technical high school students
disability
trust
alienation
communication
demanding
responsive - Abstract:
- This study used ordinary least squares multiple regression to examine 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade Career and Technical High (CTC) School students’ gender, student disability, student grade, highest education level of most educated parent, parental attachment, and parental involvement on career thoughts and its constructs of Decision Making Confusion (DMC), Commitment Anxiety (CA), and External Conflict (EC). In addition, Cohen’s d effect sizes and confidence intervals were used to examine for statistically significant difference in 11th- and 12th-grade CTC high school students’ Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) dysfunctional career thinking total scores and subscale scores of DMC, CA, and EC compared to 11th- and 12th-grade academic high school students CTI global and subscale scores. Multiple regression analysis results for 376 CTC high school students suggested that parental attachment subscale scores of Trust and Alienation contributed to dysfunctional career thinking scores and its subscale scores. Also, parental involvement scores contributed to Decision Making Confusion scores whereas no demographic variables contributed to CTI total or subscale scores. Findings between 299 CTC high school students and 396 academic high school students indicate with 95% confidence no statistical significant differences for career thoughts total and CA scores but with 95% confidence statistical significant differences for DMC and EC scores. Limitations of this study and implications for school counselors, high school students, parents, and researchers are discussed.