Michael T. Brown

The Career Development Influence of Family of Origin Considerations of Race/Ethnic Group Membership and Class

Family of origin is probably the single most potent determinant of career development and one means by which the sociopolitical salience of race and class are translated into individualcareer trajectories, perhaps most significantly for those of racial/ethnicgroup minorities. However, Whiston and Keller’s critical analysis reveals that scholars have paid little attention to the relation between race/ethnic group membership and key family influencevariables.Inaddition, althoughsocioeconomicclass hasbeen shownto beparticularly influential, a readingof that analysis suggests questions aboutwhether the most important family of origin variables have been investigated. In this article, the author identifies family variables and correlates of likely importance in understanding the career development of persons from diverse racial/ethnic group minorities and diverse social strata. Future scholarship might be advanced by considering race and class in an integrated and psychologically relevant framework.

Achieving Ethnic Parity in Counseling Psychology

With the increasing diversification of the population comes an increased need for ethnic minority psychologists. Most counseling psychology programs will have to dramatically increase the numbers of ethnic minority students they enroll and faculty they hire to achieve parity and meet the need for more ethnic minority counseling psychologists in the future. This article describes the preconditions and strategies needed to recruit, to select, and to support ethnic minority students and faculty in counseling psychology programs.

Math and Science Pursuits: A Self-Efficacy Intervention Comparison Study:

This study compared two interventions to increase math self-efficacy among undergraduate students. Ninety-nine first-year undergraduate students participated in an intervention involving performance accomplishment or an intervention combining performance accomplishment and belief-perseverance techniques in which participants constructed a rationale for their future success in math/science university courses. As hypothesized, participants in the combined intervention immediately demonstrated higher math self-efficacy than did the Performance-Accomplishment only group; data convey that this effect was sustained at a 6-week follow-up. No differences were found between the groups in interest in technical careers, confidence in successfully completing math/ science courses, and willingness to enroll in math/science courses. Data analyses by gender indicated that male participants but not female participants in the combined intervention immediately demonstrated higher math self-efficacy than their counterparts. Findings suggest that self-persuasion activities may make an important contribution to enhancing math self-efficacy at least for men. Implications for women and future research are discussed.

Blueprint for the Assessment of Socio-Structural Influences in Career Choice and Decision Making:

The purpose of career assessment is to gather the relevant information for assisting clients in career choice and decision making. There is increasing recognition that until persons who are female or are ascribed as members of racial and ethnic minority groups have equal economic, educational, social, and political opportunities throughout their lives, socio-structural realities and their psychological concomitants will continue to be significant factors to assess. Importantly, the significance of those features lies in both their reality and perceived reality. But what factors should be assessed and how are we to assess them? The purpose of this article is to identify important new directions in the assessment of vocationally relevant socio-structural variables.

8 – Discriminant Analysis

Publisher Summary Discriminant analysis is a powerful descriptive and classificatory technique to describe characteristics that are specific to distinct groups and classify cases into pre-existing groups based on similarities between that case and the other cases belonging to the groups. The mathematical objective of discriminant analysis is to weight and linearly combine information from a set of p-dependent variables in a manner that forces the k groups to be as distinct as possible. This chapter provides a thorough and complete discussion of what investigators need to know and do to use discriminant analysis properly. It begins with a layout of the specific steps and procedures necessary to conduct a descriptive discriminant analysis. This is followed by a more detailed discussion of each step. Information about how to properly interpret the results of a descriptive discriminant analysis is provided, followed by a discussion of predictive discriminant analysis. Finally, it describes reporting requirements for publishing results of either a descriptive or predictive discriminant analysis.

Ethnic Parity Goals are Not Race-Based Quotas

In our earlier article, we identified ethnic parity, or representation equivalent to that found in the general population (also referred to by some as racial balance), as a goal to which counseling psychology as a profession should aspire. We based that goal on the assumption that aptitude for counseling is similarly distributed across ethnic groups and that in a just society, the ethnic diversity found in society would be reflected in the ethnic diversity found among counseling psychologists. Support of the goal can also be found in studies that have documented lower drop-out rates and better treatment outcomes when therapist and client are ethnically similar (Flaskerud, 1986, 1991; Sue, Fujino, Hu, Takeuchi, & Zane, 1991). Thomas and Weinrach (1998) indicated that they “are strongly opposed to ethnic parity” (p. 6) and that implementing such a goal violates current federal law. With regard to federal law, affirmative action and the goal of achieving ethnic parity (or racial balance) in the workplace was established when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order No. 11246 in 1965 and has been upheld by every president since Johnson. Furthermore, in its landmark