TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 61 Table 2 Predicting Career Adaptability by Resiliency Scores b t p value R 2 F p value Career Planfulness 0.09 3.37 0.0217* MAS REL REA 0.191 0.139 -0.023 1.50 1.08 -0.23 0.1373 0.2840 0.8178 Career Exploration 0.15 5.84 0.0010** MAS REL REA 0.385 -0.001 -0.026 3.12 -0.01 -0.27 0.0024* 0.9922 0.7857 Career Decision Making 0.25 10.96 < 0.0001** MAS REL REA 0.455 0.035 -0.080 3.93 0.30 -0.88 0.0002** 0.7667 0.3812 Note. N = 101. MAS = Sense of Mastery; REL = Sense of Relatedness; REA = Emotional Reactivity. * p < 0.05 ** p <0.001 Discussion The results of this study should inform researchers and practitioners who are interested in assessing and advancing the career adaptability and resiliency of adolescent mothers while concurrently being mindful of perceived obstacles. In terms of career adaptability skills, the adolescent mother participants endorsed similar skills to their peers in both career planfulness and career decision-making, but lower scores in career exploration. Overall, participants appear to be average in their career planfulness skills, including engagement in career planning and career knowledge. This finding suggests that adolescent mothers are just as competent with respect to career planfulness as nonparenting peers in the normative sample of the CP of the CDI-S (Thompson & Lindeman, 1981). The career exploration scores indicate that environmental exploration (e.g., gathering information about careers of interest, jobs/careers in a local geographical region, jobs/careers with specific companies, career training opportunities; making contact with professionals in career areas of interest) is the most pressing of exploration needs. The results suggest that the participants show a need for increased career exploration skills, especially regarding environmental exploration. However, Porfeli and Skorikov (2010) stressed the importance of both aspects of career exploration. Thus, developing self-exploration skills (i.e., reflecting and connecting past experiences to future career choices and plans) would be beneficial for the participants. Consistent with the findings of Creed et al. (2009), targeted exploration initiatives are recommended to develop effective environmental and self-exploration skills to help adolescent mothers improve their overall career exploration skills. For career decision-making, participants indicated feeling the most confident in assessing their own interests and abilities, conducting career-related research on the Internet, and planning and goal setting. They indicated feeling the least confident in navigating issues related to college, preparing a résumé, clarifying values, knowing about salary and wages for specific jobs and careers, and identifying potential employers. Several of the skills