Career indecision among college students: a review of literature

Educationally and vocationally undecided students have been of concern among counsellors, administrators and academic advisors at colleges and universities. Literature suggests that many practitioners view career indecision as a normal developmental task among students while others believe it is a serious and unhealthy issue. Undecided students may have mixed feelings of fear, anxiety, confusion, negative feelings and perception of themselves and their situation and are in need of professional help. Career indecision is a complex phenomenon. Counsellors need to understand this phenomenon so that they may be able to help adolescents and young adults in their career development. Extensive studies concerning the nature of career indecision among adolescents and young adults and factors related to it have been done. Various factors found to be related to career indecision such as self-perceptual problems, anxiety, personality disorders, parental and family interactions and expectations, and problems within the academic institutes including lack of proper information, knowledge, and guidance related to selecting a career. This paper presents a review of studies have been done on career indecision. The discussion focuses on the dimensions and typology of career indecision, factors related to it and implications to counsellors in helping increasing number of undecided students to obtain a clearer academic and career direction have been also discussed

Kompetensi kaunseling pelbagai budaya dan kompetensi spiritual dalam kalangan kaunselor berdaftar di Malaysia

This study aimed to examine the level of spiritual competence and multicultural counselling competence among registered counselors in Malaysia. This study also would like to identify the different levels of spiritual competence and multicultural counseling competence based on demoghraphic factors such as gender, age, religion, ethnicity, educational level and tenure approval. A survey was conducted by administering a set of questionnaire consisting "the spiritual competency scale" by Young, Cashwell, Wiggins-Frame and Belaire (2002) and "Multicultural Competency Inventory" by Sodowsky, (1993). Both scales have been translated to Malay language. A total of 240 registered counselors participated in this study. The results showed that most counselors have a moderate level of spiritual competence with a mean of 3.64 as well as moderate level of multicultural competence with a mean of 2.78. In terms of differences in the level of spiritual competence, there is no significant differences based on gender, age, education level and years of service. Only the religious and ethnicity factor has a significant difference in the levels of counselors' spiritual competence. As for multicultural competence, there is a significant difference in age factor. Therefore, some suggestions have been made based on the findings of this study

Sparkle of existential time as a sanctuary in marital counselling

Nowadays, Existential thought is considered to be a practical approach among psychologists and counsellors. Nevertheless, what seems to be ignored is paying thoughtful attention to all dimensions of Existential thought which is an essential matter among counsellors and psychologists. Moreover, some issues in Existential thought such as time are disregarded among marital counsellors as well as individual counsellors. The goal of this article is to allocate exhausting existential time to benefit marital counsellors. Findings show that existential time has full potential to be applied for marital counselling. Furthermore, review of the related literature demonstrates that there is not enough experimental and descriptive research to evaluate the effect of existential time on matrimony

Manifestation of existential issues as a brilliant function for quality of matrimony

There are some important issues in marital counselling which are discoursed in Existential thought. These issues are freedom, time, human communication, meaning of life, and anxiety, which are shared by the existential counsellors and philosophers. Even though there are full potentials of the existential issues to be applied during counselling sessions, most of them are ignored by couple counsellors. The purpose of this article is to highlight these issues as the key concepts in four different counselling theories of Existential thought. We found that, each theory used only certain issues as the key concepts. Therefore, this study gathers all of the applied existential issues for a future comprehensive marital counselling model. Applying these issues together seems to be a brilliant function for quality of matrimony

The relation of career indecision and parental attachment among Iranian undergraduate students.

Career indecision particularly among college and undergraduate students is a concern of counselors and psychologists. This concern has led to numerous research studies related to career indecision and factors that influence it, such as family relationships. In this regard, several studies have reported a significant relationship between career indecision and parental attachment. However, little research has been undertaken on the influence of this factor in regard to career indecision for Iranian students. For this purpose, 158 Iranian freshmen and sophomores who had completed the ‘Career Decision Scale’ (Osipow et al., Journal of Vocational Behavior 9:233–243, 1976) and had been identified as career-undecided, completed the ‘Inventory of Parents and Peer Attachment-Revised’ (Armsden & Greenberg, Journal of Youth and Adolescence 16:427–453, 1987). The results revealed that a significant negative relationship was found between career indecision and attachment to mother, whilst the relationship between career indecision and attachment to father was not significant. However, regression analysis showed parental attachment did not significantly predict career indecision of students. Implications and recommendations for further research are discussed

Recovering from co-dependence: a study of Iranian wives of persons with substance use disorder

Spouses of persons with substance use disorder are likely to suffer from co-dependence, requiring their own process of recovery. Limited research exists, however, describing the process of recovery from co-dependence for this group in Iran. This study aimed to describe recovery from co-dependence among wives of persons with substance use disorder in Nar-Anon self-help groups in Iran. A qualitative case study design was employed to conduct the study. Eleven Iranian wives were selected by purposive snowball sampling technique. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, non-participation observations and documents. Analyzing the findings through constant comparative method revealed seven interconnected stages of recovery from co-dependence: support system of Nar-Anon, raising awareness, accepting reality, growing spiritually, detaching from unhealthy dependency, being responsible for oneself, and transferring the message of Nar-Anon to others. The findings of this study shed light on the importance of support systems and spirituality in the process of recovery from co-dependence. Dealing with enabling behaviors in the process of recovery was also discussed

SELF-PERCEIVED MULTICULTURAL COUNSELLING SELF-EFFICACY LEVELS AMONG SCHOOL COUNSELLING TEACHERS

The purpose of this study was to identify the school counselling teachers’ level of multicultural counselling self-efficacy and to examine the relationship between multicultural counselling self-efficacy with selected demographic variables. Multicultural counselling self-efficacy refers to the belief of school counselling teachers’ confidence on demonstrating multicultural counselling skills. This study was conducted on 167 school counselling teachers in Negeri Sembilan. This study used the Multicultural Counselling Self-Efficacy-Racial Diversity (MCSE-RD) instrument for data collection. The data were analysed descriptively using mean, frequency and percentage. The raw score was analysed to identify the polarity of school counselling teachers’ multicultural counselling self-efficacy. Findings show that school counsellors perceived themselves having average level of multicultural counselling self-efficacy (m= 5.27). This study also found that there are significant relationship between selected demographic variables and school counselling teachers’ multicultural counselling selfefficacy score. Implications of the study and suggestions for future research are also discussed. Keywords: multicultural counselling, multicultural counselling self-efficacy, school counselling teacher

A brief review of multicultural counselling self-efficacy and multicultural counselling competency

The globalisation process which has taken place all over the world has not only changed the horizon but greatly impacted human race, especially human culture and tradition. The impact on the society can be clearly seen by the reality in the school. School as the miniature of today’s society challenged the teachers with various severe issues by the students. Most of these issues such as random sex, homosexuality, suicide and bullying are very much related to the student’s background. Thus, counselling teachers need to exhibit multicultural counselling competency and be confident when serving multicultural clients. The multicultural counselling competency has long been promoted since 1982 is said to consist of three components namely belief and attitude, knowledge and skills related to multicultural counselling. One of the ways to assess one’s competency is by measuring the multicultural counselling self-efficacy and multicultural counselling competency. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to explore the concepts of multicultural counselling self-efficacy and multicultural counselling competency especially from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT)

Predictors of psychological well-being among Malaysian graduates

Investigations in the field of psychology have traditionally paid attention to studying mental health problems and their prevention (Kaplan, Shema, & Leite, 2008; Kokko, Korkalainen, Lyyra, & Feldt, 2012). However, a lack of psychological problems is not necessarily an indicator of the psychological well-being of individuals. Therefore, this study is an attempt to investigate the extent to which the components of cognitive emotion regulation, social support, and physical activity influence the psychological well-being of graduate students in a Malaysian university (University Putra Malaysia). A total of 534 graduate students were selected from this university and the sample size was determined by proportional sampling. Data was analyzed using the Structural Equation Model. The findings of the study revealed that the psychological well-being of Malaysian graduate students was significantly influenced by planning, catastrophyzing, significant others' support, reappraisal, other-blame, self-blame, friend support, putting into perspective, acceptance, and walking. Among these, it appeared that planning was the main strategy that influenced the psychological well-being of the Malaysian graduate students in this study

Characteristics of co-dependence among wives of persons with substance use disorder in Iran

Substance use disorder is known to adversely affect both the user as well as his or her family members. A consequence of chemical dependence on family members is co-dependence. Co-dependence is associated with an excessive focus on the needs and behaviors of the person with substance use disorder. Most studies in the field of drug-related problems in Iran have focused on the substance user, while few studies have been carried out on the family members. A qualitative case study approach was employed to explore characteristics of co-dependence among wives of persons with substance use disorder in Iran where substance use disorder is a notable social harm. Purposive snowball sampling technique was used to identify 11 Iranian wives of individuals with substance use disorder. The data were collected through in-depth, face-to-face interviews, non-participation observation, and document analysis. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. The analysis yielded five main characteristics of co-dependence among wives of persons with substance use disorder, namely: Denial, enabling behavior, low self-worth, enmeshed self, and weak spiritual relationship with God. The findings showed that except for a weak spiritual relationship with God, most of the characteristics of co-dependence among the participants were similar to the traits of co-dependents found in previous studies conducted outside Iran