A 20-Year Retrospective of The Career Development Quarterly

A review of The Career Development Quarterly was conducted for a 20-year period (Volumes 23 through 42). A total of 791 articles were classified into the 14 substantive areas of career research and practice devised by Fitzgerald and Rounds (1989). Author institutional affiliation, geographic location, and leading contributors were also computed. Two principle areas of research activity and publication were evident (life-span perspectives on career development, and career development interventions), which accounted for 51.2% of the articles examined. Overall, Quarterly content has remained stable and no clearly definable trends across the years were apparent in any given topic.     

Development and evaluation of the Sleep Treatment and Education Program for Students (STEPS)

University students report significantly worse sleep quality than the general population. Sleep problems are related to increased health concerns, irritability, depression, fatigue, and attention and concentration difficulties, along with poor academic performance. Clinical research indicates that psychoeducational interventions are among the most effective methods for improving sleep quality in the general population. Similar studies for university students are lacking. In this study, the authors describe the development of the Sleep Treatment and Education Program for Students (STEPS) and evaluate its effectiveness with a double blind, experimental design. Students in the treatment group reported significantly improved sleep quality and sleep hygiene behaviors at 6 weeks posttreatment.     

Differentiation Levels of College Students: Effects on Vocational Identity and Career Decision Making

This study assessed the effects of differentiation levels on the career development of college students. Participants were 231 college students who completed the Differentiation of Self Inventory (Skowron & Friedlander, 1998 ), My Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980 ), the Career Decision Profile (CDP; Jones & Lohmann, 1998 ), and demographic questions. The results supported the hypotheses that higher levels of the various components of differentiation would predict higher levels of vocational identity and fewer difficulties with career decision making. In particular, lower levels of emotional cutoff and emotional reactivity and higher levels of “I position” predicted higher levels of vocational identity and career decision making. Results suggest a more complicated picture for fusion, with higher levels being predictive of lower levels of decisiveness but not significantly related to vocational identity. Implications of the results for career counselors are provided.     

Content Analysis of CDQ From 1994–2003: Implications and Trends for Practitioners and Researchers From a Decade of Research

A review of the content of The Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) was conducted for the period between 1994 and 2003. In total, 297 articles were published in CDQ during this period. The content analysis was based on content, authorship, and institutional affiliation. The principal areas of research were career development: life‐span perspectives and women's workforce participation. Of the articles published during this period, 33% fell into 1 of these 2 categories. Compared with the previous analysis (W. Buboltz & M. Savickas, 1994), a change was noted in the amount of research in women's workforce participation, which rose from 1.4% to 12.8%, whereas research on career development interventions fell by approximately 50%. The authors discuss implications and areas for future research.     

Sleep habits and patterns of college students: a preliminary study.

The negative effects of sleep difficulties have been well documented. However, the prevalence of such problems among US college students has not been well studied. Design difficulties are common in the limited number of existing investigations, making it difficult to estimates the prevalence and types of disturbance studied. The authors describe the use of a quantitative-based assessment instrument to provide an initial indication of students' sleep problems and to serve as a means of addressing some of the deficiencies in the literature. In their sample of 191 undergraduates at a rural southern university, they found that most of the students exhibited some form of sleep disturbance and that women, in general, reported more sleep disturbances than men did. They suggest how colleges and university officials can alter procedures to minimize students' sleep disturbances and reduce the deleterious effects of sleep problems on academic performance.