TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 59 mothers’ career development. Career adaptability and resiliency were correlated to look for relationships between the two and entered into a multiple regression to determine the predictive power. Career adaptability was defined as and measured by the participants’ process of planfulness, exploration and decision-making. In the area of career planfulness, participants’ scores were slightly higher than the average score for the norm sample of female adolescents (Thompson & Lindeman, 1981): CP ( M = 3.34, SD = 0.78), career-planning engagement ( M = 3.15, SD = 0.93) and career knowledge ( M = 3.61, SD = 0.88). This finding suggests that adolescent mothers in this study were similar to their peers in terms of career planfulness. For career exploration ( M = 2.73, SD = 0.99), participants reported a moderate amount of career exploration behaviors with slightly higher self-exploration ( M = 3.16, SD = 1.12) involving reflection on one’s future career and past experiences, than environmental exploration ( M = 2.34, SD = 1.08) that involves investigating career possibilities. The reliabilities for the current study were .89 for both CP subscales and .90 for the total scale. In terms of career decision-making, there was little variation between the total score ( M = 3.26, SD = 0.95) and each of the subscale scores, which ranged from 3.12–3.37. The subscale reliabilities ranged from .87–.90, and reliability for the total scale was .90. Thus, participants were neither strong nor weak in terms of decision-making skills related to selecting a college major, determining one’s ideal job, deciding on values related to occupations and preparing for a job search. Regarding resiliency, participant T scores for the three scales and scaled scores for the subscales were compared to those of the female adolescent norm group (Prince-Embury, 2006). T scores over 60 are considered high, 50–59 are above average, 46–49 are average, 41–45 are below average, and below 40 are low. The reported T scores for participants were average for both the MAS ( M = 48.29, SD = 7.93) and the REA ( M = 49.44, SD =10.58) and below average for the REL ( M = 44.47, SD = 10.11). The manual reports that scaled scores for the subscales over 16 are considered high, 13–15 are above average, 8–12 are average, 5–7 are below average, and below 5 are low. The related subscale scores for the MAS were average ( M = 9.45–9.75); subscales for the REL were average ( M = 8.12–8.75); and subscales for the REA were average ( M = 9.80–10.39). The subscale reliabilities ranged from .57–.87 and the scale reliabilities ranged from .84–.93. The participants rated 25 perceived obstacles using the OS (Klaw, 2008). The obstacles were organized into seven categories plus other to capture themes that have been reflected in the literature (e.g., pressing immediate needs, work-related concerns, education-related concerns). Ratings of 2 (somewhat of a concern) and 3 (a large concern) were combined and categorized for descriptive and contextual purposes. The most frequent obstacles for adolescent mothers were related to pressing immediate needs (childcare [73%] and transportation [72%]), work-related concerns (need for more job training [72%] and not many jobs available in my area [72%]), and education-related concerns (need more preparation to continue my education [71%] and need money to continue my education [68%]). Another identified obstacle was health-related concerns for mother or child (68%). Of lesser concern for these adolescent mothers was discrimination (facing discrimination because I am a woman [26%] and facing discrimination because of where I live [20%]) and relationship concerns (parents wanting me to work full-time [27%] and my baby’s father doesn’t want me to work [19%]). Deviant behaviors do not appear to be obstacles for most adolescent mothers surveyed; these behaviors include education-related concerns such as suspended/expelled from school (14%) and community concerns such as fear of community violence (21%), being in jail or in trouble with the police (14%), and being part of a gang (5%). Relationships Between Career Adaptability and Resiliency The mean scores for the three dimensions of career adaptability were correlated with the three resiliency scales scores (see Table 1). Within the resiliency measures, personal resiliency (as measured by the MAS scale) and relational resiliency (as measured by the REL scale) demonstrated a moderately strong positive correlation ( r = 0.65), while emotional vulnerability (as measured by the REA scale) was weakly and negatively related