Decision making in college seniors

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.

Both paper and computer-accessible data are available.