Seventy-eight adolescents were administered the Career Decision Diagnostic Assessment instrument. Students with mental retardation or learning disabilities scored more poorly than nondisabled students on decision anxiety, tendency to avoid decision making, authority orientation, and luck and fate orientation. The study concluded that students'…

Responses of Australian students from grade 8 (n=53) and grade 9 (n=56) to questionnaires concerning health and fitness were correlated to locus of control. A significant negative correlation was found between student knowledge and the belief that health and fitness are controlled by chance. (Contains 14 references.) (MDH)

Highlights particular assumptions and biases that underlie Western approaches to counseling and offers guidelines to revising these assumptions in counseling Chinese clients. Differences in communication styles, interdependence, family relations, and community are related to varied expressions of presenting symptomatology and to communication…

Reports on a study of 120 (60 boys, 60 girls) middle school students in Bophuthatswana on the relation of academic achievement to self-concept and locus of control. Finds that measures of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism are related negatively to school achievement. (CFR)

Adolescents (n=650) rated 10 activities involving drug and alcohol use, unprotected sexual intercourse, and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol in 6 domains concerning risk to self or others, pleasure, control, peer approval, and parental disapproval. A factor analysis of the items revealed three second-order factors: inherent danger,…

Examined the self-protective role of social attributions by comparing individual attributions made to the self, to one's ethnic group, and to factors external to oneself. Results from 309 Black, Hispanic, and White mothers show they all attributed positive outcomes to themselves, while Whites attributed failure to themselves personally. Middle-…

Investigated the concerns that lead children to confide in others or refrain from doing so. Subjects were 8, 10, and 13 year olds. Results indicated that the children who more frequently confided in others and the children with more internal locus of control described more potential costs and benefits of confiding than did children who rarely…

Presents preliminary results from a continuing study of academic locus of control (ALOC). Describes ALOC differences between development/nondevelopmental students, males/females, and based on class status and number of developmental courses taken. Reveals a more highly developed sense of internal control among nondevelopmental students. Includes…

A study reveals the need for extensive refinement of the Revised Perceived Environmental Control Measure purported in the past to be a reliable and valid instrument to measure the relationship between the psychological construct, "locus of control," and environmental action or environmentally responsible behavior. (MCO)

Causal attributions of 96 college students' performance in cooperative group assignments, and students' perceptions of the underlying dimensions of causal attributions (including relationships among performance outcomes, attributional dimensions, and attributional consequences) were examined. Locus of causality was related to affective reactions.…

This study of 86 Israeli parents of adolescents with severe intellectual disability found that parents applying for out-of-home placement tended to have external locus of control, less social support, and high levels of stress, compared to nonapplying parents. Applying parents also tended to be older and less educated and were more often single.…

Gives first-year results of three-year program evaluation for drug and alcohol prevention project. Compared a target group of 152 sixth graders receiving instruction using Botvin's life skills training curriculum with 64 subjects receiving no treatment. Results indicated that the program had a significant positive impact on the target subjects'…

Analyzes the relationship among physical attractiveness, locus of control, sex role orientation, and assertiveness in undergraduate students. Reviews videotapes of mixed-sex student groups engaged in discussion. Finds an internal locus of control positively correlated with assertiveness. Uses a behavioral measure of assertiveness rather than…

Pastoral counseling can enable African-American men to adopt a different identity by presenting a model of holism that allows men to access both masculine and feminine sides of their identities, becoming whole persons who respond to the world from within rather than reacting to external pressures. (SLD)

College students (N=217) completed questionnaires to examine associations between codependency, relationship quality, and personality characteristics. Codependency was associated with lower self-esteem and lower perception of interpersonal control. Codependency was also found to be associated with greater self-consciousness, social anxiety, and…