knowledge. Results suggested that the class improved students’ career planning knowledge and helped them map their career path. Other researchers have noted that self-efficacy is an important variable to consider when examining why students engage in career exploration. According to Nauta (2007), high levels of self-efficacy predicted engagement in career exploration activities such as internships, career research, or mock interviews. Most researchers studied the relationship between self-efficacy and engagement in career exploration within underrepresented populations. For example, Gushue et al. (2006) applied this theory to a southeastern Latino/a population of high school age students and Nevill and Schlecker (1988) studied females. Both of these studies concluded that their respective populations had lower self-efficacy concerning career-decision than their Caucasian and male counterparts. Gushue et al. (2006) and Nevill and Schlecker (1988) suggest that teachers, career counselors, and advisers could ease the transition to the working world for students by increasing levels of self-efficacy. For example, teachers can show students how their skills transfer to different careers. This knowledge increases students’ levels of self-efficacy and encourages students to view more careers as viable options. These studies link self-efficacy to both social support networks and career exploration. Increasing students’ levels of self-efficacy through career counseling or exposure to more career-related knowledge increases students’ participation in career exploration. Most importantly for students and their educational institutions, increased participation in exploratory activities can help ease graduates’ transition to adulthood by forming realistic expectations of the work place and can help students discover what they want and/or do not want in a career. that previous research has identified social networks, the different methods of career exploration, and levels of self-efficacy as important variables to consider when studying student participation in career exploration, we test the following hypotheses:
Index of Student Perceived Skill and Asset Gain from Internships 16.077 83 .000 12.512 10.96 14.06 Figure 2: One samples t-test of students’ perceived skill and asset gains from internships Figure 3: Levels of perceived skill and asset gain from internships We reject the null hypothesis in favor of supporting our alternative hypothesis that students who make greater use of career exploration resources tend to perceive themselves as better prepared to enter the workforce than do students who use career exploration resources less. Hypothesis 2: Students’ social networks have a more significant impact on career exploration than does use of on-campus resources such as a career counseling center. To test our second hypothesis which states that social networks have a more significant impact on career exploration than the use of an on-campus career counseling center, we asked students to report (1) their use of social networks and on-campus career counseling resources to find career exploration opportunities and (2) the perceived usefulness of these resources in exploring careers. Figure 4 and Table 3 illustrate the total reported usage of social networks and on-campus resources for career exploration and shows that social networks were used more than on-campus resources. 74.7% (287), 77.3% (297), and 78.3% (300) of the sample had used their social networks of academic advisors, professors, and peers, respectively, while only
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