The Influence of Personal Growth Initiative and Coping Styles on Career Exploration and Vocational Identity

Journal of Vocational Behavior 54, 127–141 (1999) Article ID jvbe.1998.1650, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

The Influence of Personal Growth Initiative and Coping Styles on Career Exploration and Vocational Identity Christine Robitschek and Stephen W. Cook Texas Tech University Participants were college students, 107 women and 98 men. Path analysis provided moderate support for Harren’s model of personal characteristics leading to vocational exploration, which in turn leads to vocational identity. Specifically, personal growth initiative predicted environmental exploration and vocational identity. Coping style predicted self-exploration. Support was found for the prediction of vocational identity by environmental exploration. The presence of both direct and indirect paths between personal characteristics and vocational identity highlights the importance of considering both career exploration processes and outcomes. Implications for practitioners are presented. © 1999 Academic Press

Harren (1979) proposed a stage model of career decision making for college students that incorporated a number of factors which influence how an individual progresses through the decision-making process. The first two stages in Harren’s model (i.e., awareness and planning) were the focus of the present study. Awareness is characterized by recognition of an opportunity for change in a person’s career path. When people become aware of a need to change then they move into the second stage, planning, which incorporates two major processes: exploration and crystallization. Exploration involves gathering information about oneself and the developmental task at hand. One of these developmental tasks, sense of purpose, includes the specific activities of selecting a major and choosing an occupation. The exploration process is followed by crystallization, which involves narrowing career options, including solidifying vocational identity. In summary, college students become aware of a need to select a major and occupation, explore themselves and their options, and narrow their options which results in a crystallized vocational identity. Although exploration is considered normative in the college years (Super, 1980), the level of engagement in this process varies within this population A version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August, 1997. We thank Dani Binegar for her assistance with data collection and entry. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Christine Robitschek, Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051. E-mail: [email protected]. 127 0001-8791/99 $30.00 Copyright © 1999 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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(Blustein & Phillips, 1988; Stumpf, Colarelli, & Hartman, 1983). Harren hypothesized that personal characteristics influence the decision-making process and account for some of the variance in exploration. In recent years, other writers (e.g., Blustein, 1988, 1989; Solberg, Good, Fisher, Brown, & Nord, 1995) have added to the list of influencing factors. The present study tested a portion of Harren’s model and incorporated more recent literature which enhances the model. We used path analysis to describe relations among personal characteristics, career exploration, and vocational identity (see Fig. 1). Explicit in Harren’s (1979) model is the hypothesis that exploration of the self and the environment will lead to clearer vocational identity. This hypothesis is a commonly accepted component in career decision making (e.g., Tiedeman, 1961; Jordaan, 1963) and was tested in the current study (Hypothesis 1). In addition, it seems likely that there is not a perfect correspondence between exploration and vocational identity. It is possible, for example, to have considerable engagement in the process of exploration, such as attending career counseling sessions and taking several vocational inventories, but continue to have difficulty consolidating this information into a vocational identity. Conversely, an individual might have a very clear sense of vocational identity, but have made little effort to explore vocational interests, values, and skills, or the world of work. Therefore, even though we anticipated a strong relation between career exploration and vocational identity, it was important to determine if different relations existed between these variables and the personal characteristics of interest. Two of the personal characteristics that Harren (1979) identified as influencing the decision-making process were self-concept and style. He defined self-concept as self-perceptions that are relevant to vocational decision making. Other writers have studied personal characteristics that can be thought of as components of self-concept and can influence exploration or vocational identity development. In particular, they have presented the theme that an internally motivated, intentional, confident orientation toward growth and exploration is related to high levels of career exploration. For example, Ellis and Taylor (1983) posited the importance of initiative in the exploration process. Also, Solberg and colleagues (1995) found that human agency was related to exploration. This orientation toward growth and exploration was operationalized in the present study as personal growth initiative (Robitschek, 1998). Robitschek (1998) defined personal growth initiative as “active, intentional engagement in the process of personal growth” (p.184) and specified that it includes both cognitions which support and encourage personal growth (e.g., “I know how to change specific things that I want to change in my life”) and behaviors which enact this motivation (e.g., “If I want to change something in my life, I initiate the transition process”). People with high levels of personal growth initiative not only are aware that they have developed over time, but also are proactive about the change process, intentionally seeking out or capitalizing on opportunities for development. In contrast to self-efficacy which consists of beliefs (i.e., cognitions) that a person can successfully engage in particular

FIG. 1. The influence of personal growth initiative and coping styles on career exploration and vocational identity. All path coefficients are standardized. Path coefficients for women are listed first and for men are listed second (*p , .05).

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behaviors (Bandura, 1977), personal growth initiative encompasses these cognitions, but also includes behavioral components, actually exhibiting these cognitions in behavior (Robitschek, 1998). It was hypothesized that personal growth initiative would be positively related to career exploration behaviors and vocational identity (Hypothesis 2). Harren (1979) also stated that decision-making style (i.e., the individual’s typical ways of coping with decision making) affects the career exploration process. Other writers, drawing from the coping literature, have posited additional personal characteristics which can contribute to decision-making styles. Heppner, Cook, Wright, and Johnson (1995) defined a reflective coping style as “the tendency to examine causal relationships, plan, and be systematic in coping” (p. 282), and a reactive coping style as “a tendency to have emotional and cognitive responses that deplete the individual or distort coping activities” (p. 282). A similar distinction has been made in the decision-making styles literature. Blustein and Phillips (1988) assessed the relation between vocational decision-making styles and career exploration. One of the dimensions they considered was thinking versus feeling. Thinking reflects “the extent to which the individual approaches decisions in a thinking-oriented, rational, and deliberate manner,” which is similar to reflective coping. Feeling is an approach to decisions that is “feeling-oriented, emotional, and impulsive” (p. 205), which is similar to reactive coping, although more exclusively emotional and with perhaps fewer negative implications for the individual. Blustein and Phillips found that the thinking/feeling dimension was related to exploration such that people who scored toward the thinking end of the continuum tended to report engaging in more exploration. Conversely, people on the feeling end reported engaging in less exploration. These findings suggest the corollaries that people who report higher levels of exploration or a more crystallized vocational identity might be likely to report higher levels of reflective coping (Hypothesis 3) and lower levels of reactive coping (Hypothesis 4). Heppner and colleagues (1995) identified an additional style of coping which appears relevant to career exploration. Suppressive coping style was defined as “a tendency to deny problems and avoid coping activities” (p. 282). Because individuals must perceive a need for exploration in order to engage in exploration activities (Blustein, 1988; Harren, 1979), it is probable that people who deny there is a vocational problem to be resolved will be less likely to engage in exploration behaviors. It was hypothesized, therefore, that suppressive coping would be negatively related to career exploration and vocational identity (Hypothesis 5). Finally, we did not expect personal growth initiative and coping styles to be independent of one another. Rather, we expected that there would be a positive relation between personal growth initiative and reflective coping (Hypothesis 6), given the instrumentality present in each. We also expected a negative relation between personal growth initiative and suppressive coping (Hypothesis 7). No relation was hypothesized between personal growth initiative and reactive cop-

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ing. For the model tested, we also included anticipated covariances between reactive and suppressive coping and between supressive and reflective coping, since correlations between these scales have been found in previous research (Heppner et al., 1995). One additional hypothesis was tested regarding the potentially complex relations between reactive coping and the career development variables. Miller (1982) emphasized the potentially negative effects of the anxiety which is often a part of the career exploration process. Blustein and Phillips (1988), however, found that people who reported higher levels of career exploration also reported higher levels of anxiety about this exploration. They speculated that “contextual anxiety may provide a necessary incentive for individuals to engage in career exploration” (p. 213). It seems likely that the presence of affect can have positive or negative effects on exploration and career outcomes, depending on a number of factors which might moderate the relation. Because emotions can lead us toward personal growth (Cavanaugh, 1990), it is likely that people who already have tendencies toward engaging in growth-enhancing behaviors would be more likely to be able to make use of affect to impel them toward growth. We hypothesized that personal growth initiative would moderate the relations of reactive coping style with career exploration and vocational identity (Hypothesis 8). METHOD Participants Participants in the final sample included 107 women and 98 men who were enrolled in introductory psychology classes at a large southwestern U.S. university. Students used research participation as an optional way to earn course credit. They signed up for this and other experiments without any information about the experiment except the time required, possible dates for participation, and the experimenter’s name and phone. Average age of participants was 19.6 (SD 5 3.3). The majority of the participants (n 5 157) described their ethnicity as Anglo, Non-Hispanic American, or White (77%); 26 self-identified as Hispanic or Mexican American (13%); 8 self-identified as African American (4%); 6 self-identified as Asian American (3%); and 1 person self-identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native. The remaining 7 identified their ethnicity as “Other” (3%). The majority of participants (n 5 128) classified themselves as university freshmen (63%), 37 as sophomores (18%), and 39 classified themselves as juniors, seniors, or “other” (19%). One participant did not give this information. Measures My vocational situation. Vocational identity was assessed by the vocational identity scale from the My Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980). This scale instructs respondents to answer 18 true/false items that reflect thoughts about their present or future jobs or career. False answers are summed such that people with higher scores possess a more clear and stable picture of

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their vocational identity (Holland et al., 1980). Sample items are, “I don’t know what my strengths and weaknesses are” and “No single occupation appeals strongly to me.” Internal consistency of vocational identity scores was reported as .85 for a diverse sample including college students (Holland et al., 1980), and test–retest reliability for a 3- to 5-month period was reported as .64 for university freshman who had not declared a major (Lucas, Gysbers, Buescher, & Heppner, 1989). The construct validity of the scale has been supported by lower vocational identity scores for undeclared university freshmen and adults seeking career counseling than other groups that would presumably have stronger vocational identity (Lucas et al., 1989). Also, the scale evidenced hypothesized relations to personality and vocational measures (Leong & Morris, 1989). Career exploration survey. To assess environmental exploration and selfexploration, we used a slightly modified version of the corresponding scales from the Career Exploration Survey (Stumpf et al., 1983). The Environmental Exploration scale and the Self-Exploration scale consist of six and five items, respectively, that respondents rate using a 5-point Likert response option. These items assess the extent to which respondents have engaged in various career exploration activities during the previous 3 months. Sample items for environmental exploration include “Investigated career possibilities” and “Went to various career orientation programs.” Sample items for self-exploration include “Contemplated my past” and “Focused my thought on me as a person.” Possible scores for environmental and self-exploration range from 6 to 30 and 5 to 25, respectively. Higher scores indicate greater use of the respective career exploration strategies. As Blustein (1989) has noted, this instrument was originally developed with people that were looking toward relatively imminent career transition (e.g., graduate students, upper level undergraduates). Our sample, with more than 80% of the participants being freshmen or sophomores in college, was generally at an earlier stage in the career decision-making process. Therefore we used the versions developed by Blustein (1989) for use with this population that involved minor rewording of several original items. Blustein (1989) reported internal consistency estimates for the revised scales as .89 for environmental exploration and .82 for self-exploration. Two-week test–retest reliability was .85 for environmental exploration and .83 for self-exploration. Support for the validity of the original scales has been demonstrated by hypothesized differences or lack of differences between specified groups of people, hypothesized convergence with relevant career search variables, and hypothesized divergence from other presumably unrelated demographic measures (Stumpf et al., 1983). Personal growth initiative scale. Personal Growth Initiative was assessed by the nine-item Personal Growth Initiative Scale (Robitschek, in press, 1998). Respondents are asked to rate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each of the items using a six-point Likert response option. Scores can range from 9 to 54, with higher scores indicating more personal growth initiative. Sample items include “I know what I need to do to get started to toward reaching my

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goals” and “I have a specific action plan to help me reach my goals.” Robitschek (1998) reported internal consistency estimates ranged from .78 to .90 in samples of college students and adults in transition. Test–retest reliability was reported as .84 for 1 week, .73 for 4 weeks, and .74 for 8 weeks. Convergent validity for the Personal Growth Initiative Scale was supported by moderate positive correlations with assertiveness, internal locus of control, and instrumentality and a moderate negative correlation with chance locus of control. Discriminant validity was supported by a lack of significant correlations with social desirability, age, or SAT scores and no statistically significant differences between ethnic minority and majority group members on Personal Growth Initiative Scale scores (Robitschek, 1998). Construct validity was supported further by a significant positive correlation between the Personal Growth Initiative Scale and domain-specific (e.g., self-acceptance, autonomy) growth processes that were intentional (i.e., “I remember one or more situations in which I intentionally tried to grow in this area”). Significant negative correlations were found between the Personal Growth Initiative Scale and growth processes that were in awareness but unintentional (i.e., “I remember one or more situations which influenced this area but I didn’t intentionally learn/grow from it”) and growth processes that were out of awareness and unintentional (i.e., “I don’t know how I ended up at my place on this continuum. It just happened”) (Robitschek, in press). Problem-focused style of coping. Coping style was assessed by the 18-item Problem-Focused Style of Coping (Heppner et al., 1995). This measure was designed to assess dispositional coping efforts that either facilitate or hinder efforts to resolve personal problems. Respondents are instructed to indicate “how frequently you do what is described in each item” (Heppner et al., 1995, p. 281) using a 5-point Likert response option. Three scales assess three styles of coping: Reactive, Reflective, and Suppressive (possible score ranges: 5–25, 7–35, and 6 –30, respectively). Higher scores indicate greater use of the corresponding coping style. Sample items for reactive coping include “My old feelings get in the way of solving current problems” and “I act too quickly, which makes my problems worse.” Sample items for reflective coping include “I think my problems through in a systematic way” and “I think about ways that I solved similar problems in the past.” Sample items for suppressive coping include “I avoid even thinking about my problems” and “I don’t sustain my actions long enough to really solve my problems.” Internal consistency of scale scores ranged from .68 to .80, and 3-week test–retest reliability ranged from .65 to .71 in a college student sample (Heppner et al., 1995). Considering the difficulties noted in the assessment of coping (Aldwin, 1994), these reliabilities are considered acceptable. Convergent validity of this measure has received initial support by strong correlations with other coping measures and with measures of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by a lack of strong correlations with social desirability or neuroticism (Heppner et al., 1995). A situa-

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tional version of the instrument also was included in this study. Results were similar to those found for the dispositional version, and limited information was available on the psychometric properties of the situational version, therefore it was not considered further. Procedure Written consent was obtained from the participants before they responded to the measures. Participants responded first to questions concerning demographic information and responded last to the situational version of the coping instrument (so that the situational version would not influence responses on the dispositional version). The remaining measures were included in the middle of the questionnaire packet, being counterbalanced to eliminate any potential order or sequence effects. Participants were debriefed concerning the nature of this study after responding to the measures. Data were collected from 118 women and 104 men. Nine women and 6 men gave incomplete data and were removed from the sample. The data were screened for univariate outliers (i.e., a score . 1/2 3 SD’s). Outliers were found only for the Personal Growth Initiative Scale (n 5 2). These two participants were dropped from the sample, yielding the 107 women and 98 men used in the analyses. RESULTS Means, standard deviations, and estimates of internal consistency for the measures are reported in Table 1. The means indicate that participants in this study generally were actively engaged in career exploration and had not yet crystallized a vocational identity. To test for possible gender differences, we used two-tailed t tests. While we typically would reduce a to minimize familywise Type I error for multiple tests, we elected to maintain a 5 .05 to avoid missing possible gender differences. One statistically significant gender difference was found on the Personal Growth Initiative Scale [t (203) 5 2.21, p , .05] such that women scored higher than men. Next we compared correlations among all of the variables for women and men using a z test. The correlation of personal growth initiative and reactive coping was significantly stronger (p , .05) for men than women (r 5 2.47 and 2.21, respectively). The correlation of reactive coping and environmental exploration also was significantly stronger for men than women (r 5 2.26 and .02, respectively). Because of the gender differences that were found, the data were analyzed separately for women and men. To test for relations among the variables, two-tailed Pearson correlations were used and are reported in Table 1. A per comparison a level of .005 was used to adjust for possible Type I error. Interestingly, no statistically significant correlation was indicated between self-exploration and vocational identity (r 5 .05 and 2.09 for women and men, respectively). Intercorrelations among the career measures accounted for less than 13% of the variance between variable pairs for women and less than 7% for men. Intercorrelations among the coping variables

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PERSONAL GROWTH INITIATIVE AND COPING TABLE 1 Correlations, Means, Standard Deviations, and a Coefficients by Gender Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

1

2

Vocational Identity .19 Environmental Exploration .34* Self-Exploration .05 .36** Personal Growth Initiative .43** .14 Reflective Coping .08 .14 Reactive Coping 2.25 .02 Suppressive Coping 2.26 2.06

3 2.09 .27 .02 .27 .20 .01

4

5

6

7

.11 2.32* .26 2.26 .36** .14 .37** 2.47** .42** 2.16 2.21 2.12 2.37** 2.41** .43**

2.37* 2.30* .08 2.43** 2.29* .51**

.52** .39** .21

Women M SD Alpha Coefficient

10.07 4.77 .86 a

14.67 5.53 .85

15.63 4.99 .83

41.11 7.20 .87

23.29 5.37 .80

13.33 3.77 .72

12.25 3.76 .71

Men M SD Alpha Coefficient

10.19 4.96 .87 a

14.10 5.93 .88

14.84 4.48 .77

38.76 8.09 .89

22.38 5.18 .76

13.19 3.94 .72

12.97 3.69 .68

Note. Correlations for women (n 5 107) are listed below the diagonal. Correlations for men (n 5 98) are listed above the diagonal. a KR-20, since items are dichotomous. * p , 0.005, ** p , .0001.

accounted for less than 26% of the variance between variable pairs for men and less than 18% for women. Separate path analyses for men and women were used to examine the hypothesized relations among variables (see Fig. 1). Path analysis has the advantage of controlling for Type I error and taking into account correlations between predictor variables while also exploring potential direct and indirect effects among the predictor and criterion variables. As recommended by Hoyle and Panter (1995), we used three different types of goodness-of-fit measures to assess the congruence between our hypothesized model and the data in this study. Absolute fit was assessed by the x 2 statistic and LISREL’s goodness-of-fit index (GFI: Joreskog & Sorbom, 1981). We utilized the Satorra-Bentler SCALED x 2 statistics (Satorra & Bentler, 1988, 1994) and robust standard errors (Bentler & Dijkstra, 1985) that have received initial support for being more robust under violation of statistical assumptions (see Bentler, 1995). It has been previously observed that the x 2 statistic might lead to premature rejection of models for trivial reasons (Bentler, 1995; Loehlin, 1987), but the GFI has demonstrated good performance as a stand-alone fit index (Marsh, Balla, & McDonald, 1988). We also utilized the Incremental Fit Index (IFI: Bollen, 1989) as a Type II index and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI: Bentler, 1990) as a Type III index. Both the IFI and CFI have smaller sampling variance than other fit indices (Bentler, 1995).

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GFI, IFI, and CFI range generally from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating that the hypothesized model more likely corresponds to the current data. Even though using strict criteria for acceptability of fit indices has been considered unwarranted (Hu & Bentler, 1995), values below .90 generally are considered to indicate that the tested model can be substantially improved (Hoyle & Panter, 1995). To compare the hypothesized model to the data, maximum likelihood analyses were conducted on the covariance matrix using EQS for Windows, Version 5.6 (Bentler & Wu, 1995). An initial run of the model identified one female participant whose scores contributed a disproportionally large amount to normalized multivariate kurtosis. As recommended by Bentler (1995), we decided to delete this participant and run the same model again. For women in this second analysis, x 2(3, n 5 106) 5 18.64, SCALED x 2 5 17.74, both p’s , .001, GFI 5 .95, IFI 5 .90, and CFI 5 .89. For men, x 2(3, n 5 98) 5 29.28, SCALED x 2 5 34.07, both p’s , .001, GFI 5 .93, IFI 5 .84, and CFI 5 .82. For both men and women, even though the GFI indicated the model provided an adequate fit with the data, the CFI and IFI indicated that substantial improvement could be made in the model, although less so for women. Also, although the Wald test (Bentler, 1995) indicated that none of the hypothesized paths for the originally hypothesized model could be dropped to substantially improve the model, the Lagrange Multiplier test (Bentler, 1995) indicated that adding a correlation (i.e., a covariance) between the reactive coping scale and the personal growth initiative scale would improve the model for women and men. We tested the hypothesized relations by examining the coefficients within the path analyses. The first hypothesis predicted that environmental exploration and self-exploration would be positively related to vocational identity. The analyses indicated that the self-exploration scale was not significantly related to vocational identity for men or women. The environmental exploration scale was significantly related to vocational identity for women but not for men. The second hypothesis stated that personal growth initiative would be positively related to career exploration behaviors and vocational identity. The personal growth initiative scale was significantly and positively related to the environmental exploration and vocational identity measures for women and men. Also, there was a significant relation indicated between personal growth initiative and selfexploration, but only for men. Three more hypotheses predicted relations between coping styles and both career exploration and vocational identity. As predicted (Hypothesis 3), there was a positive, significant relation between the reflective coping scale and the self-exploration scale for men and women. However, there was no significant relation indicated between reflective coping and environmental exploration for either women or men. There was a negative, significant relation between the reflective coping scale and the vocational identity scale, but only for women. Reactive coping was predicted to be negatively related to career exploration and vocational identity (Hypothesis 4). This hypothesis was not supported. In fact, a

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significant positive relation was found between the reactive coping scale and the self-exploration scale for men and women. Suppressive coping was also hypothesized to have a negative relation with career exploration and vocational identity (Hypothesis 5). None of these relations were significant in the path analyses. Two hypothesized relations among the predictor variables were supported in the path analyses. For women and men, significant positive relations were found between the personal growth initiative scale and the reflective coping scale (Hypothesis 6), and significant negative relations were found between the personal growth initiative scale and the suppressive coping scale (Hypothesis 7). Similar to the findings in previous research (Heppner et al., 1995), for both women and men significant negative relations were found between the reflective and suppressive coping scales and significant positive relations were found between the reactive and suppressive coping scales. The remaining hypothesis (Hypothesis 8) that personal growth initiative would moderate the relations between reactive coping and both career exploration and vocational identity was tested using hierarchical regression analysis as suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986). The cross product term (Reactive 3 Personal Growth Initiative) was entered last while the main effects of the reactive scale and the personal growth initiative scale were controlled for each of the three criterion variables. These analyses were conducted separately for men and women. For both men and women, the cross product term did not have a significant effect on self-exploration, environmental exploration, or vocational identity (p . .05). DISCUSSION This study tested the awareness and planning stages of Harren’s (1979) model of career decision making for college students and the possibility that the constructs of personal growth initiative and coping style could be incorporated into Harren’s model. In this discussion, we will consider the limitations of the study, the overall model, and the specific hypotheses and give suggestions for future research. Several limitations of the study should be noted. First, all of the measures used were self-report and as such were limited by the reliability of that method. Second, while the causal modeling procedure (i.e., path analysis) used in this study provided valuable information about the nature of the relations among these variables, the results cannot be interpreted in a causal way. Finally, the participants in this study were mostly 18 and 19 years old, predominantly white, generally career undecided, and engaged in career exploration. Therefore, the results should not be applied beyond this population. The path analysis indicated that the proposed model (see Fig. 1) provided a moderate fit for the data, although the model provided a better fit for women than men in this study. In addition, the tests of specific hypotheses yielded mixed results. The first hypothesis, that exploration leads to a more crystallized vocational identity, was supported only modestly. This could be because the sample

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consisted primarily of first-year college students, most of whom were engaged in career exploration and had not yet crystallized a vocational identity. It might have been too early in the career exploration process for an effect on vocational identity to be discernable. Alternatively, the items in the self-exploration scale may be too vague and lacking in specific types of information about the self which are important to consider in terms of career exploration, such as interests and skills (e.g., Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996). For example, the self-exploration scale includes the following item: “[I have] focused on me as a person.” In contrast, the environmental exploration scale items are more specific (e.g., “[I have] obtained information on specific jobs or companies”). The significant relation between environmental exploration and vocational identity for women provides partial support for the theoretical proposition (e.g., Harren, 1979; Jordaan, 1963) that people’s attempts to explore career relevant aspects of their environment help in solidifying their vocational self-concept. The results for both men and women suggest that college students with higher levels of personal growth initiative are likely to engage in more environmental exploration and to have a more crystallized vocational identity. Approaches to increase beginning college students’ personal growth initiative might result in their gathering more career information from their environment and greater success in developing an occupational self-concept. Although the relation between personal growth initiative and self-exploration was significant though small for men, it was nonsignificant for women, possibly because of problems with the self-exploration scale, as discussed above. The results provided limited support for the hypothesized relations of coping style with self-exploration. The path coefficients suggested that perhaps reflective coping and self-exploration are expressions of basic personal dispositions such as introversion and openness to experience (Burger, 1997). The significant relations between reactive coping and self-exploration, however, were positive, not negative as hypothesized. Also, personal growth initiative was found not to be a moderator of the relations between reactive coping and the vocational variables. These results provide some support for Blustein and Phillips’ (1988) finding that higher levels of contextual anxiety were related to higher levels of exploration. People who have a tendency to cope with problems in a manner that is characterized by unhelpful affective and cognitive experiences (i.e., a reactive coping style) might be more likely to engage actively in self-exploration as a way to alleviate this anxiety. Given the problems with the self-exploration measure, these results must be interpreted cautiously. There were no significant path coefficients between any of the coping styles and environmental exploration, suggesting that the degree to which college students engage in environmental exploration has little relation to their coping style. The negative relation between reflective coping and vocational identity for women suggests that women who are prone to use reflective coping are likely to have less crystallized vocational identities. Given that the sample consisted primarily of first-year college students, one possible explanation is that those

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reporting a crystallized vocational identity might have prematurely foreclosed on this identity without much thought or exploration. The relation between these variables accounts for only a small portion of the variance in vocational identity, suggesting that a lack of vocational identity is not necessarily the result of a reflective process. In contrast, the larger assessed relation between vocational identity and personal growth initiative for men and women might be based on a common theme of self-assurance. The item content of the Vocational Identity scale suggests that people who score high on this scale might be assured that their actions in the vocational domain are or will be correct. The item content of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale suggests that people who score high on this scale might be assured that they will actively and intentionally continue to grow. While there is an obvious difference between personal growth initiative’s broad perspective and vocational identity’s more narrow focus, the underlying theme of selfassurance seems similar and might account for the relation between them, particularly in the absence of a strong relation between reflective coping and vocational identity. The results of the overall tested model indicated that there are both direct and indirect effects of the predictor variables (i.e., personal growth initiative and coping style) on career exploration process and outcome. This suggests that interventions aimed at one component of exploration process or outcome might not necessarily enhance other components. For example, from these results it could be hypothesized that an intervention to develop reflective coping skills might enhance self-exploration. However, the data provide little evidence to suggest that this same intervention might enhance environmental exploration, and in fact this intervention might be detrimental to the development of vocational identity. Further explication of the relations among the various domains of vocational exploration and vocational identity must be addressed in further research. Additional research is needed in other areas, as well. First, the path analysis in this study suggested the addition of a path between personal growth initiative and reactive coping. Given that reactive coping generally leads to a lack of problem resolution while personal growth initiative is a characteristic which theoretically leads more often to successful problem resolution, a negative relation between reactive coping and personal growth initiative seems reasonable and should be added to the model tested here. This modified model should be tested with similar and dissimilar samples to assess generalizability of the findings. Also, future research could incorporate methods of measurement other than self-report, such as significant-other report or observation. Finally, true experimental research designs would provide more valid tests of causality in the hypotheses which can be derived from the results of the current study, thereby helping us to understand how to more effectively guide people to acquire a strong and well-grounded vocational identity.

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