Explored effects of psychoeducational intervention on adolescents' involvement in extracurricular activities, self-esteem, and locus of control. Randomly assigned 52 ninth graders to either empowerment or control group. Students in empowerment program maintained their level of involvement during transition to high school, time when participation…

Students are rarely invited to become active participants in their own education. Empowering students positively affects their well-being, behavior and values, academic achievement, teachers, and understanding of democracy. Barriers to giving students more choice fall into three categories: structural impediments, teacher resistance, and student…

Examined relationships among childrearing, parental locus of control about childrearing, and child's behavior style. Found that parents who perceived their child's behavior as either externalizing or internalizing had a weak internal locus of control and were more authoritarian. Perceived externalizing child behavior was positively related to…

Responds to case of Sondra presented in Career Development Quarterly (September 1990). Suggests that her inability to decide on a career may be rooted in long-term personality style, poor ego strength, noisome family dynamics, and/or developmental delay. Recommends an integrative approach incorporating both personal and career counseling. (PVV)

Examined perceptions of personal control in 1,267 individuals in 4 generations of families participating in multiple cohort, longitudinal study spanning 1971-91. Over 20 years, mean levels of personal control became more internal among 560 individuals who participated in all measurements, probably reflecting environmental factors. Found…

Examined whether performance on scales reflecting problem-solving dimensions of personality could predict ego-strength in college students (n=348). Findings did not support statistically significant relationship between all problem-solving scales and ego-strength. Individually, evidence supported hypothesis that ego-strength can be predicted from…

Conceptualizations of self-directed learning have emphasized the social characteristics of learner isolation or social autonomy, neglecting the importance of pedagogical and psychological factors. However, psychological self-directedness or psychological control is the necessary and sufficient cause for self-directed learning and best…

Studied attributions for school-based loneliness for 36 Finnish students with a high degree of loneliness and 42 with a low degree of loneliness. More lonely students mostly used a nonself-serving internal-stable attributional style, while less lonely students attributed temporary loneliness to external, unstable, and controllable causes.…

Explores causal attributions of success and failure as functions of religious orientations among a sample of Polish university students. Participants assessed secular and religious attributions on three dimensions: controllability, stability, and locus. Finds that religious and non-religious participants attributed both success and failure to…

Adult children of workaholics were compared with adult children of nonworkaholics on self-concept, anxiety, depression, and external locus of control. Results indicate greater depression and external locus of control among the offspring of workaholics. Children of workaholic fathers also experienced higher anxiety. Self-concept was not related to…

Utilizes the Students' Perception of Control Questionnaire (SPOCQ) with college students (N=147). Internal consistency and intercorrelations of SPOCQ subscales were acceptable. SPOCQ scores were related to self-esteem and grade point average. There were differences in SPOCQ scores for males and females and in the relation to self-esteem.…

A study of 71 battered women found that (1) unemployed women had lower career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) and endorsed traditional roles; (2) high self-esteem correlated with greater CDMSE; (3) internal orientation correlated with high self-esteem; (4) external orientation correlated with higher perceptions of career barriers; and (5)…

Follow-up of 55 adults who completed the Healthy Heart Program, which focused on heart disease risks, cholesterol, and diet, found that attitudes and knowledge were significantly higher after the program; fat intake, blood pressure, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol were significantly lower. Locus of control did not change. (SK)

Attributional beliefs of African-American 11- and 17-year-old students with mental retardation were assessed. Results indicated that strategy ratings were intercorrelated, as were capacity ratings, yet the two constructs were differentiated by both age groups. Belief in the importance of internal strategies was positively related to recall and…

Examines the effect of color-coding instructional materials for students identified as possessing different styles of learning. Subjects (107 college students) were classified as external, neutral, or internal locus of control. Results indicated a significant main effect in favor of the color-coded materials for specific educational objectives.…