Assessing the value of meaningful work among undergraduate students is important for guiding career counseling, especially because today's students are often stereotyped as entitled and uninterested in prosocial or meaningful work. Additionally, understanding the value of meaningful work from the perspectives of career counselors would clarify if…

In career counseling, social justice is typically integrated by helping oppressed groups navigate their way around obstacles of injustice while also working to dislodge the oppressive conditions from society. The authors affirm both of these courses of action while also advocating a third strategy: inviting clients to serve as agents of change by…

The current study explored the work values, career decidedness, and career choice comfort of 236 Latina/o incoming college students. Of a possible 13 work values, students placed more importance on work enjoyment, genuine interest in the field, and job security and less importance on family expectations, having free time, and working without close…

Interests, personality, and values figure prominently in work motivation, yet little research has examined the combined influence of these factors on vocational behavior. The present study therefore examined relationships among these variables in a sample of 282 medical students (169 women, 113 men) who responded to the Strong Interest Inventory,…

This study examined the variables incoming first-year college students believed were most important to their long-term career choice. A sample of 31,731 students were surveyed from 1995 to 2004, and results revealed that men placed a greater emphasis on making money, women placed a greater emphasis on working with people and contributing to…

A sample of 3,570 first-year college students were surveyed regarding the factors they deemed most important to their long-term career choice. Students as a whole identified intrinsic interest, high salary, contributions to society, and prestige as their 4 most important work values. Additional analyses found men more likely to espouse extrinsic…

The growing interest in the role that spirituality and religion play in mental health has spawned research investigating the relationships between spirituality, religion, and career development. To date, only a limited number of studies have explored these variables in tandem, but generally these investigations have found aspects of spirituality…

A sample of 3,484 incoming first-year students at a large, mid-Atlantic University were surveyed to assess a variety of attitudinal and behavioral variables pertinent to the college experience. The current study focused on how student value system orientation, or the degree to which values are open or closed, related to key aspects of college…