The document summarizes research on the influence of parents on exploratory college students' career choices. It discusses previous research that found parental involvement impacts students' enrollment decisions, especially for those from lower-income families. The author's study examined the relationship between exploratory students and their parents to determine the level of dependency on parental advice for career choices. Surveys were given to students but no significant differences were found between genders or experimental/control groups. However, the author found college major did correlate with parental influence levels.

1. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 1
Parental Influence on Exploratory College Student Career Choice
Aston J. Rankins
Kutztown University
Author Note
Aston J. Rankins, Undergraduate Student at Kutztown University.
Correspondence concerning this research report should be addressed to Aston J.
Rankins, Undergraduate Student at Kutztown University.
Email: Arank176@live.kutztown.edu

2. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
Abstract
There is recent research that has established that parental influence does have an impact
on exploratory students and their career choices. Some research focused on adolescents and
college readiness. Other research believed that parental income and student desired income were
key factors of influencing career decisions. The purpose of this study is to find a correlation
between the exploratory students and the relationship they have with their parent(s). The study
aims to find the level of dependency the student has on parental advice when making their
individual career choice. Eighty undergraduates were assigned to two groups. The experimental
group was shown a music lyrical video clip that demonstrated a young adult appreciating his
parents for supporting him and making him a better person. The Achievement Motivation
Measure was utilized in order to determine how much of an influence a parent has when it comes
to the student making decisions for the career choice.

3. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
Parental Influence on Exploratory College Students
Decision making is not an easy task to fulfill, especially for young adults who are still in
search of what they want to do for the rest of their lives. There are a number of different factors
that can influence a young individuals decision-making process when it comes to what they
desire for their futuristic goals in life like desired income, status, peers, different aspirations,
security, freedom, etc…But, there is one influence that has little research and has been seen to
have some type of impact on a student’s college and career choice; the parent.
In some prior research, Jorg Vianden, an assistant professor at the University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse, and Jeff T. Ruder, an academic advisor in the college of Pharmacy at
Oregon State University, wrote an article about how parents deal with the transition of their child
going off to their first year of college. Within their research, Vianden and Ruder stated that “the
level of parental involvement in college search process is related to student enrollment decisions,
especially for students from lower and middle income homes” (pg. 66). What their research
showed after doing a qualitative study on the parents at the check-in process of their students’
first year of college, one of the findings was that “nearly three-fourths of participants cited
missing the student, experiencing the feelings associated with an empty nest, and feeling
separated from the student as reasons to expect challenging transition” (pg. 69). With having this
mind, based on this piece of information, it is easy to believe that due to certain socio-emotional
issues, a parent can just as easily influence a child to stay closer to home and go to a different
college than allowing their child to simply go off to be more independent. It is important for the
student and parent to have a good relationship, even in earlier stages that could impact how a
student goes about making decisions as will be explained in the next paragraph.

4. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
The bond between a child and parent in early stages has a huge influence on how student
will make their own decisions. According to Hedva Braunstein-Bercovitz PH.D., a professor at
the school of behavioral sciences in the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, who also wrote
the article “Self-Criticism, Anxious Attachment, and Avoidant Attachment as Predictors of
Career Decision Making”, claims that “secure attachment was positively linked to effective
career developmental indices, such as commitment to career choice, college adjustment, career
exploration, career self-efficacy, and career decision making. Insecure attachment was on the
other hand positively linked to ineffective developmental variables, such as career indecision”
(pg. 177-178). Vianden and Ruder stated that “parents who indicate positive attachment to their
students through supportive involvement are likely to assist in positive development of their
student”
Hedva Braunstein-Bercovitz sampled 173 college freshman, 122 being female and 51
being male, and administered 3 different Likert scale measures in order to find correlations
between avoidance attachment with self-criticism, anxious attachment with self-criticism and
self-criticism with career indecisions (Braunstein-Bercovitz, pg. 179). She utilized an Experience
in Close Relationships to help measure avoidant and anxious attachment (Braunstein-Bercovitz,
pg. 180). She used a shorter version of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, called
Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, Self-Criticism Six Items (DEQ-SC6) in order to measure
self-criticism (Braunstein-Bercovitz, pg. 180). Finally, to measure career indecision, she utilized
The Career Decision scale (Braunstein-Bercovitz pg. 180). The results of her study showed that
insecure attachments (avoidance and anxious attachments) had a hindrance on career decisions,
insecure attachments positively correlated with self-criticism, and self-criticism positively

5. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
correlated with career indecision. The evidence displayed in the research above demonstrates the
level of influence that a parent has on their child’s decision making.
My current study is to find out the level of influence that a parent has on their exploratory
college student. There is not much research that deals specifically with the parental influence and
exploratory college students. In fact, in an article written by Dr. Jamie L. Workman, a professor
at the University of Northern Iowa, called “Parental Influence on Exploratory Students’ College
Choice, Major, and Career Decision Making”, Workman states in her article that “There is a
notable gap in the research surrounding parental influence on exploratory students” (pg. 24).
Workman went on to say that “the unexpected parental influence theme provides insight to a
significant source the participants sought out to aid them in decision making and can provide
college administrators key information to help determine if a student truly is ready to make
major and career decisions” (pg. 24). Dr. Workman did some qualitative data collecting through
conducting interviews with first year college students in order to gain insight on student mean-
making of experiences with most of the research focus on academic advising and LLC
experiences (pg. 25). However, one of the unexpected themes that developed in their research
was parental influence on college choice, major and career decision making (Workman, pg. 25).
With that being said, my hypothesis is parents will have a high level of influence on an
exploratory college student decision making on career choice.
Methods
Participants
The sample consisted of 41 freshmen students (9 males and 32 females with the
exception of a few sophomore, Jr. and seniors) between ages 18 and 24 (M=18.68 and

6. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
SD=1.234) who are attending Kutztown University and are involved in a general psychology
class. The participants in these classes were assigned to attend a study in order to receive psych
credits for class participation.
Materials and Procedures
The first scale that was administered to the participants was the Adolescent-Parent Career
Congruent Scale. The original purpose of utilizing this scale was to measure how congruent or
incongruent an adolescent and parent in career development utilizing a Likert scale ranging from
1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree).
Participants were recruited through a subject pool system through the Department of
Psychology. Those subjects that wanted to participate in the experiment had to register for
through the subject pool website to obtain a sonar id, a code given to subjects in order to keep
their name anonymous from other participants and to keep their identity classified. Once
obtaining their sonar id, participants could sign up for any of the five 30 min interval timeslots
that were available. Each slot had a capacity of eight subjects per timeslot.
The participants were split into two groups, the control group and the experimental
group. Those who were involved in the experimental group were asked to watch a music lyrical
video clip called “All Because Of You” by Jimmy Scott. The premise of the song was a young
adult speaking about his parents expressing how because of them, he has become the person he is
today. The theory behind using the song was that the participants that listened and read the lyrics
of the song would have an increase of positive emotion for their parents and would possibly
recall positive memories of how their parents assisted them to getting to the point they are in
their college journey. After watching the video, the participants were asked fill out the

7. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
demographic sheet, The Parental Relationship Scale and the Adolescent-Parent Career
Congruence Scale.
Results
The analyses focused on several independent variables of the participants such as gender,
age, year of college, college major, parental status, occupation of both parents and who were
they raised by if there parent(s) were divorced, separated or widowed. These variables were
measured based on how the participants had scored on the APCCS and the Parental Relationship
Questionnaire. The design of the experiment was a 2x2 factorial design (Gender [male, female])
x (Condition [control, experimental]) analysis of variance (ANOVA). The ANOVA revealed no
significant main effects. The main effect for Gender, F (1, 40) = .464, p =.500 revealing no
difference between males and females. The main effect for Condition, F (1, 40) = .029, p = .865
reveling no difference between control and experimental groups. Additionally the ANOVA for
no interaction between Gender x Condition, F (1, 40) = .013, p = .910.
Upon further research, a separate One-way ANOVA was submitted for each constant
independent variable (college major, year of college, parental status) outside of gender and
condition with the APCCS to see if there was any significance found in each factor individually.
As a result, there was no differences found in the year of college, F (1, 40) = .378, p = .769. For
parental status, F (1, 40) = .876, p = .507, no significance was found when factoring it with the
APCCS. However, when analyzing the APCCS with college majors (business, education, liberal
arts and social sciences, and visual and arts performances), F (1, 40) = 2.749, p = .034, I
discovered statistical significance between the APCCS and the college major that the participant
were pursuing. I correlated the means of both the Parental Relationship Questionnaire and the

8. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
Adolescent-Parent Career Congruence Scale used in the experiment by using the Pearson
Correlation Coefficient in order to see if these scales had any relationship together. As a result,
the Pearson Correlation (r (41) =.476, p=.002) showed that the scales had a strong positive
relationship.
Discussion
Current research sought to explore parent(s) influence on college student decision making
on career choices. Results showed that the manipulation had no effect based on condition and
gender. There was also no interaction between both the factors.
Within the design, there were a few plausible reasons for not obtaining the
evidence necessary to support the claim. For starters, there is a possibility that the manipulation
used could have had a negative impact on the scores instead of a positive impact due to the
decreased mean scores in the experimental group. Another reason for there being no significance
could be due to the sample size or not using other reliable measures to uncover other factors that
may have not been considered to have an effect on research. Additionally, the manipulation use
in the experiment was weak due to the video not relating well with the participants because they
were freshmen. Finally, after further analyzes on the data, a Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient,
r(41)=.476, p=.002, was utilized to compare the scales used in the experiment and what was
discovered was there was a strong positive correlation between both scales indicating that both
scales not only related to one another, but were measuring the same thing. However, though no
significance was found between genders and condition, through further analyses showed that
college major and year of college have an impact on how a parent can influence their student’s
decision when choosing a career path. Workman (2015) discovered similar themes in her

9. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
research in studying parental influence on exploratory students’ decision making process when it
comes to career choices, college major and college choices. Workman (2015) was doing
phenomenological study on examining meaning-making experiences that first year college
students were involved in. (pg. 25). Though the research was focusing on academic advising
through semi-structured interviews, she discovered an immerging theme of positive parental
influences on their student’s major and career decision making processes (pg25). With this
knowledge, it is conceivable to believe that parents do have some impact on their career
development.
Future research could investigate parental influence amongst juniors and seniors as the
representative sample and utilize a stronger manipulation. Additionally, using a one on one
interview method in the collecting of data would possibly help to uncover other factors and be
more effective than simply using measures.

10. PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON EXPLORATORY COLLEGE STUDENTS 2
References
Braunstein-Bercovitz, H. (2014). Self-Criticism, Anxious Attachment, and
Avoidant Attachment as Predictors of Career Decision Making. Journal of Career
Assessment, 22(1), 176-187. Doi: 10.1177/1069072713492938
Sawitri, D. R., Creed, P. A., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. (2013). The
Adolescent–Parent Career Congruence Scale: Development and Initial Validation.
Journal of Career Assessment, 21(2), 210-226. Doi: 10.1177/1069072712466723
Workman, J. L. (2015). Parental Influence on Exploratory Students’ College Choice, Major, and
Career Decision Making. College Student Journal, 49(1), 23-30.