Running head: COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION AND CAREER THOUGHTS

This study examined relationships among levels of communication apprehension and dysfunctional career thoughts in relation to career problem solving and decision making. Analysis of correlation coefficients found statistically significant moderate correlations between measures of negative career thinking and communication apprehension. Furthermore, significant mild to moderate correlations among subsets of these two constructs were found. Finally, the results indicated that individuals with high levels of communication apprehension had a higher amount of negative career thoughts than persons with low levels. Implications for further research are discussed in light of these results. Communication Apprehension 3 An Examination of the Relationship Between Communication Apprehension and Career Thoughts Successful career problem solving and decision making draws upon cognitive skills that require memory, interpreting and drawing inferences from past experiences, attending to extensive facts and data, and visualizing the future. Counselors make inferences about persons’ level of cognitive skill by listening to them talk about their thoughts or by examining their selfreport responses to tests and inventories. The idea guiding this study was that persons who have good cognitive skills and can communicate those skills effectively in speaking and writing will have fewer negative career thoughts impeding their career problem solving and decision making. The mental processes involved in career problem solving and decision making are explained in Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) theory (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991; Sampson, Reardon, Peterson, & Lenz, 2004). According to CIP theory, emotions (affect) and thoughts (cognition) are inseparable from career choice. As persons "think through" their career problems and make decisions, their emotions can help motivate them to choose and follow through or cause them not to act at all, to act too slowly, too quickly, or too randomly to make an appropriate choice. What persons know about themselves and the world in which they live is constantly evolving and interacting. As they learn from life experiences, they organize what they know about themselves and the world in more complex ways. Career problem solving and decision making are learned skills that people acquire at different rates. Like other sets of skills, people can improve their ability to make choices through learning and practice. Career resources and career services can be used to help people learn about and practice the informationprocessing skills needed to become more effective problem solvers and decision makers. This Communication Apprehension 4 occurs as persons mentally process information by writing and speaking in journaling, counseling, advising, or interviewing. Peterson, Sampson, Lenz, and Reardon (2002) theorized that poor career problem-solving and decision-making skills are related to negative thinking or dysfunctional career thoughts, and they developed the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI; Sampson, Peterson, Reardon, Lenz, & Saunders, 1996) to measure such thoughts. Currently, researchers are seeking to learn more about dysfunctional career thoughts and how they relate to other constructs important in career decision making. Previous studies have found dysfunctional career thoughts to be positively correlated with the inability to choose a major field of study (Kilk, 1997), self-appraised problem-solving ability (Slatten, 1999), perfectionism and career indecision (Osborn, 1998), state anger (Strausberger, 1998), ego identity (Voight, 1999), and depression and career indecision (Saunders, Sampson, Peterson, & Reardon, 2000). Moreover, college students with higher levels of dysfunctional career thoughts do not appear to make a positive adjustment to their learning disability (Dipeolu, Reardon, Sampson, & Burkhead, 2002). In contrast to these findings, dysfunctional career thoughts do not appear to be related to offender status (Railey & Peterson, 2000), or level of career decidedness and satisfaction with occupational choice (Wright, 2000). In addition, there have been no significant correlations identified between dysfunctional career thoughts and first term academic performance of undecided college students (Durbin, 2000), or indices of interest structure associated with Holland’s RIASEC typology (Wright, Reardon, Peterson, & Osborn, 2000). In spite of the mixed findings in these exploratory studies, Cognitive Information Processing theory suggests that persons with negative self-attributions may have dysfunctional career thoughts which will lead to difficulty in making career decisions. Communication Apprehension 5 Previous research has not examined communication apprehension in relation to career decision making. This is an important issue in career counseling because communication apprehension may “freeze” persons as they seek to share their thoughts, ideas, and visions for themselves vocationally. As much as 15-20 percent of the US population fear, or at the very least is uncomfortable with, oral communication, especially about matters that are difficult to conceptualize (Neuliep & McCroskey, 1997). College students making educational and career decisions are required to speak about career matters many times. For example, interpersonal communication occurs in interviews (both for internships and employment), during information interviews with faculty or mentors, at career expositions, and during individual career counseling or academic advising appointments. It would be virtually impossible for a student to avoid communicating in at least one of these career related situations while in college. Is it possible that negative career thoughts, problematic in career decision making, and problems in oral communication are related? College students experiencing anxiety and apprehensiveness in communicating information about self and occupational information or their decision-making skills might be especially likely to have negative career thoughts that would impede successful career problem solving and decision making. Almost 40 years ago, Osipow and Phillips (1967) and Osipow and Alderfer (1968) examined this issue. In the first study, Osipow and Phillips reported a process evaluation of a speech course designed to develop oral communication skills and improve career maturity. They characterized the results as a qualified success in that some students benefited from preparing and delivering four speeches related to career issues and decision making. However, some students indicated that the career focus of the course was too limiting as the semester moved along in time. Communication Apprehension 6 Later, Osipow and Alderfer (1968) used Super’s (1963) notion of crystallizing a career decision, basically a verbal-based cognitive process, to structure a speech class to foster this process. The idea was to have 407 high school students at several grade levels give a series of speeches around topics of career development in order to further their vocational maturity in the crystallization stage. Results indicated that certainty about educational and career plans increased for females at all grade levels taking the experimental speech class, but this was not true of males. The authors were unable to explain these results for men, which were counter to most other studies of career maturity. These two studies provide limited support for the idea that facility in career problem solving and decision making might be related to cognitive skills communicated in speech. We found no follow-up studies exploring this topic. The present study, however, examined the concept of career thinking rather than career maturity. Moreover, the present study did not examine skills in preparing or delivering speeches in a speech class, but examined the concept of communication apprehension (CA) as it pertains to career thoughts. In the past, communication apprehension has also been called stage fright, speech anxiety, performance anxiety (Horwitz, 2002), and reticence (McCroskey, 1977). However, for the purposes of this study, these terms are not used interchangeably. McCroskey (1977) viewed CA as “an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” (p. 78). While this definition was originally based on oral communication, CA now encompasses all areas of communication, including writing (McCroskey & Beatty, 1998). The differences between persons who do and do not experience high levels of CA are numerous. Unfortunately, people who experience high levels of CA are often viewed or described in a negative manner. For example, high communication apprehensives may be harder Communication Apprehension 7 to get to know, may be viewed as introverted, less attractive and desirable, and unsocial (McCroskey & Wheeless, 1977). McCroskey and Daly (1976) go as far as stating that the highly communication apprehensive individual is socially maladaptive and has little chance for success in society. On the other hand, individuals with low levels of CA may be described using more positive words such as adventurous, extraverted, confident (McCroskey, 1977), cheerful, able to cope, decisive, objective, and determined (McCroskey & Daly, 1976). Communication apprehension has also been linked to occupational choice. Daly and McCroskey (1975) found that individuals with high CA prefer occupations that require little communication, such as computer programmer, while the opposite is true for individuals with low CA. There also appears to be a relationship between CA and self-esteem. McCroskey, Daly, Richmond, and Falcione (1977) asserted that many of the words used to describe individuals with high CA also were used to describe individuals with low self-esteem. The results of this study indicated that high communication apprehension and high self-esteem were negatively cor