Decision-Making in College Seniors, 1979

This study was undertaken as part of a larger research project exploring situationally induced affective development. This particular part of the project focused on the relationship between emotional maturity and the planning styles of students. The purpose was to determine whether several personality constructs were related to the style with which people make decisions. Forty male and 40 female seniors at Boston University, selected randomly from the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Engineering, participated in this study. Also sampled were students who had shown exceptionally high promise in high school and had been awarded full scholarships at the university. The participants were predominantly White. At the first testing session, participants wrote stories to four Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) pictures, and completed a variety of measures of cognitive and affective development and decision-making strategy, as well as a demographic questionnaire. Three weeks later, all of the participants were interviewed. The interviews focused on how and why the student chose his/her particular major and how and why the student had decided upon his/her plans for the next year. Particular emphasis was placed on the influence of early experiences, important others, experiences as college students, reasons for any changes in major or vocational plans, and future goals. The Murray Research Archive holds both original record paper data, and numeric file data from this study.

本研究作为一项探索情境诱导性情感发展的大型研究项目的子课题开展。本项目的这一分支聚焦于学生情绪成熟度与规划风格之间的关联，旨在明确若干人格结构是否与人们的决策风格存在相关性。本研究从波士顿大学文理学院与工程学院中随机选取40名男性、40名女性大四学生作为被试，同时纳入了曾在高中阶段展现出极高潜力并获本校全额奖学金的学生，受试群体以白人为主。在首次测试环节中，参与者需针对四张主题统觉测验（Thematic Apperception Test）图片编写故事，并完成多项认知与情感发展、决策策略相关测评工具，同时填写人口学问卷。三周后，对所有参与者开展访谈。访谈围绕学生选择就读专业的缘由与过程，以及确定下一学年规划的依据展开，重点关注早期经历、重要他人的影响、大学就读经历、专业或职业规划变更的原因，以及未来目标等维度。本研究的原始纸质记录数据与数值文件数据均由默里研究档案馆（Murray Research Archive）收藏。