Gender, College Major Selections, Classifications Within Majors, And Its Relationship With Locus Of Control: An Empirical Evidence For Counseling Educators

Abstract

To help counselors develop strategies to enhance students’ social, personal, and psychological well-being, this research provides an understanding of how students perceive their environment.  Specifically examining graduate and undergraduate students, the researcher was concerned with ascertaining the effect of the college-major variable (Business Administration versus Health Care Administration) and classification (graduate versus undergraduate) of the internal versus external Locus of Control orientations.  Employed in this investigation was a parametric procedure, which was the t-Test of independent samples.  One hundred twenty-five (125) graduate and undergraduate students were selected to participate in this empirical study.  The Social Reaction Inventory Questionnaire was used to collect the data regarding the internal versus external orientations of the college students.  The investigative instrument had a split-half reliability coefficient of .82 for the test as a whole and was deemed to have excellent construct validity.  The study concluded that Business and Health Care Administration students have similar overall Locus of Control orientation scores, graduate students have similar overall Locus of Control orientation scores, and counselors and other concerned individuals in the helping profession should be cognizant of the characteristics and traits of internally and externally oriented students.