Dennis K. West

Successful completion of college study represents a channel for greater earnings and upward career mobility, and also increases the likelihood that one’s offspring will have better prospects for earnings and employment (Havighurst & Levine, 1979, chap. 2). Additional benefits found to be concomitant with advanced education include greater occupational choice, political participation, and better mental health (Levin, Guthrie, Kleindorfer, & Stout, 1971). Advanced education is also a means for personal achievement, for a role providing service to others in the community and to participation in admired and rewarding professions in contemporary culture.

It is well-documented that American Indian students experience difficulties in completing college. In an article addressing this situation, Scott (1981) states that "Virtually every reference in the literature concerning American Indian students in institutions of higher learning tells the same story . . . Indians who do go to college are less likely to complete degree programs than are white students" (p. 381). In an investigation relating various factors to college achievement among American Indian students, Huffman, Sill, and Brokenleg (1986) reported that the attrition rate for Indian students at one university was estimated to be as high as 85%. At Eastern Montana College, a regional four-year school in the Northern Rocky Mountain area, student enrollment figures for the academic year 1986-87 show a 4% drop in enrollment for the entire student body from Fall to Spring quarter, but an 11% drop for American Indian students. This difficulty in completing college means many of the opportunities available to American Indian students through education, both as individuals and as an ethnic group, are unrealized.

The reasons why Indian students have such a difficult time successfully completing college are many and varied. Several factors affecting college performance in this population have been identified and examined, yet found to be inconsistent predictors of college achievement (Huffman et al., 1986). Studies have shown that career maturity, realistically dealing with occupational choices, correlates positively with academic performance in most student populations, including college groups (Walsh & Hanle, 1975; West, 1986). Some distinct subgroups, however, are exceptions (Burkhead & Cope, 1984), and minority ethnic groups have been found to score consistently lower on career maturity than comparison Caucasian groups (Loesch, Shub, & Rucker, 1979; Pelham & Fretz, 1982). Researchers working with Indian students often conclude that more study is needed to understand and address the problems in both educational and career processes of this group (Gade, Fuqua, & Hurlburt, 1984; Huffman et al., 1986; Lee, 1984). Consequently, there is a need for research examining the career maturity and the relationship between career maturity and academic performance among Indian college students.

Factors other than ethnicity have been found to influence career maturity scores in students, including rural or urban background of the students, age, educational grade level, and gender. Initially a research project was conducted at Eastern Montana College to investigate the relationship of some of these factors to academic achievement (West, 1986). In a sample of college students comprised of both Indian and non-Indian students from this school, career maturity was found to be positively related to age and GPA but not to gender. This present study employs that same sample of students, and is an attempt to investigate and compare the career maturity of the American Indian and non-Indian students, and to determine if the positive correlation between career maturity and academic performance found in other college populations exists in this group of Indian students.

The sample used in this study consisted of 69 students who were enrolled at Eastern Montana College during Spring quarter of 1986. The students were drawn from participants in two projects. Thirty-nine of the subjects participated voluntarily in a study of the effects of a computer-based guidance system conducted during Spring quarter by a counselor in the school’s Career/Life Planning Center. These students were recruited from several undergraduate social science classes which are often taken by students to meet the general requirements of the college. In the second project, a graduate counseling intern in the Indian Career Services program at the school administered a career maturity instrument to 30 Indian students to obtain information regarding their educational and career planning characteristics. Career planning services and workshops are some of the activities offered by Indian Career Services. These Indian students voluntarily completed the instrument and a short data sheet, and were encouraged to make appointments to review their scores with the counselor.

Thirty of the students had identified themselves on college registration materials as being American Indian, and the 39 students who had not identified themselves as American Indian were considered to be non-Indians. There was no significant difference in the mean age of the two groups. Grade-point average (GPA) was used as the operational definition of academic performance in the study, and the results of a t-test on GPA showed a significant difference (t = 3.04, p<.01) between the two groups, with the mean GPA of the Indian students being lower than that of the non-Indian students.

The total sample consisted of 25 (37%) freshmen students, 17 (25%) sophomores, 16 (23%) juniors and 10 (14%) seniors. One report of class level and GPA was missing. In the group of Indian students, 10 (33%) students were freshmen, five (17%) were sophomores, nine (30%) were juniors, and six (20%) were seniors. The group of non-Indians consisted of 15 (38%) freshmen, 12 (31%) sophomores, seven (18%) juniors and four (10%) seniors. Examination of the average cumulative credit hours of college work (class level) for the two groups showed no significant difference.

The Career Maturity Inventory-Attitude Scale (CMI-AS), Counseling Form B-I (Crites, 1978) was administered to the students in both projects. The score on this instrument was used as the operational definition of career maturity. The Attitude Scale is one part of the two-part Career Maturity Inventory (CMI), and "elicits the feelings, the subjective reactions, the dispositions that the individual has toward making a career choice and entering the world of work" (Crites, 1978, p. 3). Crites states that "Maturity of these attitudes is also associated with an individual having definite career choices, being consistent in choices over time, and making realistic choices" (p. 4).

According to Palmo and Lutz (1983), the CMI is the most widely used measure of career maturity, and has been in use for over a decade. The CMI was developed initially for use with grade school and high school students, and normative data for college students are not provided in the manual. However, the author does suggest the instrument is useful for other populations as well (Crites, 1978). The CMI-AS, or its precursor, the Vocational Development Inventory, have been used in studies involving college populations (Anderson, 1976; Walsh & Hanle, 1975; West, 1986), ethnic minority populations (primarily Black students) in high school and college (Pelham & Fretz, 1982; McNair & Brown, 1983), other high school populations which included American Indian students (Lee, 1984; Schmieding & Jensen, 1968), disabled college students (Burkhead and Cope, 1983), rehabilitation clients at various stages of retraining (Strohmer, 198 1), and disadvantaged students, some college-aged who dropped out of high school (Palmo & Lutz, 1983).

Pearson product-moment correlations between career maturity and GPA were computed, and correlations for the two ethnic groups were examined with a z-test for significance of the difference between two correlations. The mean career maturity scores were compared with t-tests for significant differences. The statistical software package, SPSS-X (1983), was employed for computation of the correlations and t-tests.

Data from the study were also investigated by three methods for the effect of class standing on the relationship between career maturity and GPA, and for career maturity differences in each class. First, the Pearson product-moment correlation between CMI-AS score and cumulative credit hours was found for the total sample and for the two ethnic groups. Second, the Pearson product-moment correlation between CMI-AS scores and GPA was determined for each class in the total sample, for each class in the American Indian group and for each class in the non-Indian group. Finally, the mean career maturity scores for Indian and non-Indian students within each class were compared.

The relationships of career maturity and academic performance are reported in Table 1.

TABLE 1
Correlations between GPA and Career Maturity (CMI-AS) and
Comparison of Correlations (z) for Indian and Non-Indian Students

*Pearson product-moment coefficient. **Test of difference between two correlation coefficients.
***One report of GPA missing.

Results showed a significant positive correlation between career maturity and GPA for the total sample of students. A significant positive correlation was also found for the group of American Indian students in the sample. A low positive correlation was found for the non-Indian students in the sample, but this correlation was not significant. However, results of the z-test testing for the significance of the difference between the two correlation coefficients indicated that the difference was not significant.

Mean career maturity scores, mean GPA and correlations through the classes are reported in Table 2. Indian students were found to have lower mean scores than non-Indian students within the total sample and within the class levels. Results of the t-tests showed a significant difference between the mean career maturity scores of the Indian and non-Indian groups in the whole sample (t = 2.55, p =.01 3), and in the senior class (t = 3.44, p = .009). Results of t-tests between the mean scores of Indian and non-Indian freshmen, sophomore and junior students were not significant.

Significant correlations between career maturity and cumulative college credits were not found in the total sample or in either ethnic group. However, the relationship between CMI-AS and GPA did vary through the classes (see Table 2). For the total sample, a high positive correlation was found in freshmen students. Among the sophomore students, a positive correlation was found, significant at the .10 level. Low positive correlations for the junior and senior students in the total sample were not significant.

TABLE 2
Mean GPA, Mean CAH-AS and GPA/CMI-AS Correlations through Classes

*N=68. **N=38.

Among the Indian students, strong positive correlations between career maturity and GPA were found in the freshmen and sophomores. Again, correlations were not significant for students in the junior or senior classes. Among the non-Indian students, significant correlations were found in the freshmen and in the juniors. The correlation among freshmen non-Indian students was high and positive while the correlation among juniors was strong and negative. No significant correlations were found for the sophomore or senior non-Indian students.

Research has indicated that ethnic minority students often score as less career mature than non-minority comparison groups, and the results of the comparison of mean career maturity scores for the American Indian students and the non-Indian students in this study showed the Indian students to have significantly lower mean scores than non-Indian students. In fact, while the career maturity of freshmen Indian students (x= 34.4) was nearly equal to the national norm score of high school seniors (x = 34.8), and sophomore and senior Indian students had higher scores (x = 36.8, x = 35.0), the overall mean score for the Indian sample (x = 33.5) was lower than the national norm for high school seniors.

This study also investigated whether the positive correlation between career maturity and academic performance found in other college populations existed in this group of Indian students. It can be concluded from the results that career maturity is positively correlated with GPA for this group of American Indian students. High significant correlations found for the freshman and sophomore Indian students suggest that the Career Maturity Inventory Attitude Scale might be used to identify incoming American Indian college students who will likely do well, or poorly, in college study. Such a screening device could be used to identify candidates for more demanding programs or, conversely, for students who would benefit from concentrated remediation programs.

The mean career maturity score and the correlation between career maturity and GPA for American Indian college students found in this study also suggests that career education might be used to address the problem of the educational attrition rate of Indian students. Career education has been shown to influence academic achievement for the better in other populations (Olson, 1979).

The results suggest that some of the constructs used to develop the CMI-AS may not be appropriate for this sample of college students. Correlations with academic performance as expected from the literature are found in the freshman and sophomore classes but are absent or negative in the junior and senior classes. Additionally, the increase of career maturity through educational progression has been considered a theoretical underpinning of the construct validity of the instrument, but in this college population, such an increase was not found. Not only was there no correlation between cumulative credits and career maturity, the lowest mean scores were found in the junior class in the total sample and in both ethnic subgroups.

Some important demographic factors likely to affect career maturity and academic performance need to be examined with Indian students, including reservation or non-reservation background, and traditional/non-traditional orientation. It has been suggested that the instrument used in this study to assess career maturity is closely tied to the dominant culture’s work values (Zytowski, 1978), acceptance of which is very likely influenced by these kinds of background characteristics of Indian students. Population subgroups, including ethnic minorities, are influenced differently by factors in their career development. Research focusing on background factors, academic preparation or college experiences which facilitate career maturity in American Indian students might be used to effect greater success in their completion of college study.

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