The Utility of Career and Personality Assessment in Predicting Academic Progress

We examined the ability of four career and personality assessment inventories to predict students’ first-year college performance and persistence. Among our sample of 677 college freshmen who enrolled in a freshman orientation course, subscales from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strong Interest Inventory, and Social Skills Inventory uniquely predicted first-year college GPA, and subscales from these three instruments and the Career Factors Inventory uniquely contributed to the prediction of freshman-to-sophomore persistence, each after controlling for ACT/SAT scores. Our findings suggest that college counseling and career center staff may provide valuable retention-promotion efforts by helping to identify students at risk for poor academic performance or attrition on the basis of commonly used career and personality assessment inventories

Can Couples Assessment and Feedback Improve Relationships? Assessment as a Brief Relationship Enrichment Procedure

Many counseling psychologists provide marital assistance to couples who have relationship problems and those who seek to enrich their relationships. The authors investigated the effects of individualized relationship assessment and feedback in relation to merely completing written questionnaires about the relationships on couples' satisfaction and commitment. Student couples ( N = 48; 26 married, 15 cohabiting, 7 engaged) participated either in (a) 3 sessions of assessment feedback ( n = 28) or (b) written assessment only ( n = 20). Assessment-feedback couples improved more over time than did written-assessment-only couples. The authors concluded that assessment and feedback produce small positive changes in already well-functioning relationships. Those changes may account for a substantial proportion of the changes produced by relationship enrichment programs