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Select and read one of the following articles, located in the Topic 4 materials:
Write a 500-750-word analysis of your selected article. Include the following in your analysis:
- What are the key differences between qualitative and quantitative research?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research designs?
- What are the essential components that should be considered when applying qualitative methods to counseling outcomes?
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By: Lisa Y. Flores
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University;
Karen M. O’Brien
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park
Acknowledgement: This study was based on the doctoral dissertation of Lisa Y. Flores, which was conducted under the direction of Michael J. Patton. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 108th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, August 2000.
We thank Nancy Betz, Mary Heppner, and Fred Leong for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article; Kristopher Preacher and Robert MacCallum for statistical consultation; Jamilla Griffin and Jason Quarantillo for assistance with coding data; and the students, teachers, counselors, and administrators of the participating schools.
Mexican American women constitute a significant portion of the American population (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996), are underrepresented at all levels of education (Carter & Wilson, 1993; Lango, 1995; McNeill et al., 2001; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991), and are overrepresented in low-paying occupations traditionally occupied by women (Arbona, 1989; Arbona & Novy, 1991; Ortiz, 1995). Relatively little empirical research has been conducted to identify the variables that contribute to the educational and occupational underachievement of Mexican American women. Indeed, researchers have noted that the career development of Hispanics has received only slight consideration in the counseling and vocational literature (Arbona, 1990; Fouad, 1995; Hoyt, 1989; McNeill et al., 2001), and they have questioned the generalizability of career development theories to Hispanics (Arbona, 1990, 1995; Fitzgerald & Betz, 1994; Hackett, Lent, & Greenhaus, 1991). The purpose of this study was to investigate the applicability of a current model of career choice to the experiences of Mexican American adolescent women and to extend the current model to incorporate variables that are hypothesized to be salient to this population.
It is well documented that Hispanics are the least educated when compared with other major racial/ethnic groups in the United States and that, among Hispanics, Mexican Americans have the lowest high school and college completion rates (47% and 6.5%, respectively; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Mexican American women are less likely to graduate from college than their male counterparts (Ortiz, 1995; Tinajero, Gonzalez, & Dick, 1991), and their representation in higher education decreases significantly at each successive level (Carter & Wilson, 1993). Moreover, those Mexican American women who pursue higher education confront many stressors and may experience psychological distress as they seek to reconcile their career aspirations with their familial and cultural values (Niemann, 2001).
Education is related to occupational status, and thus, the restricted employment status among Mexican American women is not surprising given their low educational attainment. Arbona (1989) reported that, occupationally, Hispanic women were concentrated in low and mid-level technical, service-oriented, and clerical type jobs. According to Ortiz (1995), Mexican American women were less likely to be professionals or private business owners and earned less money when compared with women from other racial/ethnic groups and Mexican American men. Moreover, Mexican American women who were in professional occupations were more likely to choose traditional and low-status occupations (Ortiz, 1995).
A review of the literature on Mexican American women revealed inconsistencies between their educational and vocational achievements and aspirations. For example, Arbona and Novy (1991) reported that the majority of Mexican American college women in their study aspired to investigative and enterprising type jobs. It is interesting that the percentage of women who expected to enter these fields was smaller than the percentage of women who aspired to these careers, whereas the opposite was true of those who aspired and expected to enter fields that have typically represented traditional career options for women. Other studies revealed that Mexican American girls aspired to careers that required a college degree and to obtaining a postsecondary education (Hernandez, Vargas-Lew, & Martinez, 1994; Valenzuela, 1993). Reyes, Kobus, and Gillock’s (1999) study indicated that 87% of the girls in a sample of predominantly Mexican American 10th-grade students aspired to nontraditional or male-dominated careers. Clearly, a difference exists between Mexican American women’s educational and vocational aspirations and their actual achievements, suggesting that these women may not be realizing their educational and career potential.
Prior studies on the career development of Hispanics have focused primarily on their educational and career aspirations (Arbona & Novy, 1991; Hernandez et al., 1994; Reyes et al., 1999) and the factors postulated to be related to their educational success (Cardoza, 1991; Fisher & Padmawidjaja, 1999; Gandara, 1982; Gillock & Reyes, 1999; Hess & D’Amato, 1996; Keith & Lichtman, 1994; Lango, 1995; Ramos & Sanchez, 1995; Rodriguez, 1996; Valenzuela, 1993; Vasquez, 1982; Wycoff, 1996). Other studies have examined the barriers that Hispanic students anticipate in their educational and career endeavors (Luzzo, 1992; McWhirter, 1997). The research to date provides insight into the career development of Hispanic individuals but contains limitations that restrict its use.
First, several studies are descriptive in nature, and while helpful in understanding patterns of behavior with this group, they do not further knowledge regarding the salient predictors of career behaviors. Second, several studies included racially/ethnically diverse samples (in which the number of Hispanics were disproportionately small) or failed to report the ethnic background of Hispanic participants. Because of the educational and occupational differences between racial/ethnic groups and among Hispanics, investigating ethnically diverse subgroups individually seems warranted (Arbona, 1995). Another limitation of the existing studies is that many included both women and men. Given differences in Mexican American women’s and men’s educational attainment, occupational status, and socialization within the culture, women and men should be investigated separately to understand the effects of cultural and gender role socialization on career decisions. Finally, few studies have assessed the influence of cultural variables, such as acculturation, on Hispanics’ career-related behaviors (Arbona, 1995).
One notable exception to the research described above was a study investigating the educational plans and career expectations of Mexican American high school girls (McWhirter, Hackett, & Bandalos, 1998). McWhirter and her colleagues studied the utility of Farmer’s (1985) model of career commitment and aspirations in explaining the educational planning and career expectations of Mexican American adolescent women. They extended Farmer’s model by including acculturation and perceived barriers in their theoretical models. The results of this study indicated that their models described the educational and career plans of a sample of Mexican American girls; however, only a modest amount of variance was accounted for by the models. Thus, McWhirter et al. encouraged researchers to include additional variables when developing future models of the career development of Mexican American adolescent women. Moreover, McWhirter et al. suggested that Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s (1994) social cognitive career theory had promise for advancing knowledge regarding the career development of Mexican American women.
Lent and his colleagues (Lent et al., 1994) extended Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory and Hackett and Betz’s (1981) career self-efficacy theory to develop a social cognitive career theory (SCCT) that hypothesized the influence of personal, contextual, and social cognitive factors on interest formation, career goals, and performance. Of interest in this study are the propositions of SCCT that background contextual variables exert an influence on career self-efficacy, which in turn directly influences career interests. In addition, Lent et al. posited that career interests directly influence career goals and that career self-efficacy both directly and indirectly (through career interests) influences career goals. Finally, proximal contextual variables were hypothesized to exert direct effects on career goals (see Figure 1). Lent and his colleagues suggested that SCCT may be used to guide inquiry on the career development of women and racial/ethnic minorities, and they recently advocated for more research to test the hypotheses related to the contextual variables in their model (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 2000). Recent studies provided partial support for the model with racially diverse middle school students (Fouad & Smith, 1996) as well as Asian American (Tang, Fouad, & Smith, 1999) and Black college students (Gainor & Lent, 1998); however, no studies to date have investigated the validity of SCCT with Mexican American adolescent women.
Figure 1. Portions of Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s (1994) model of career choice tested in the present study
To test this theory, when operationalizing the constructs advanced by Lent et al. (1994), we selected variables that were hypothesized to be salient for racial/ethnic minorities or women. Specifically, in our model, we operationalized background contextual variables to include acculturation level, feminist attitudes, and mothers’ modeling through educational attainment and occupation. Multicultural researchers have identified the importance of examining within-group differences of racial and ethnic subgroups, and Casas and Pytluk (1995) discussed acculturation as one variable that differentiates Hispanic subgroups or individuals within a subgroup. Moreover, McWhirter et al. (1998) noted that acculturation was the only variable that they added to Farmer’s (1985) model that accounted for significant variance in the educational aspirations of Mexican American girls. Other researchers also documented that acculturation was positively related to educational aspirations (Ramos & Sanchez, 1995), in addition to interest in nontraditional careers (Reyes et al., 1999), college attendance (Hurtado & Gauvain, 1997), and achievement styles (Gomez & Fassinger, 1994) among Hispanic students.
Other variables, specifically feminist and gender role attitudes, have been shown to relate to the career choices of young women (Betz, 1994; O’Brien & Fassinger, 1993), such that women with traditional gender role attitudes exhibited lower levels of career orientation and aspiration than women holding liberal gender role attitudes. Among Mexican American girls, nontraditional gender role attitudes were positively related to higher levels of educational and career expectations (McWhirter et al., 1998) and academic achievement (Valenzuela, 1993; Vasquez-Nuttal, Romero-Garcia, & De Leon, 1987). For Mexican American women, cultural expectations about gender roles may result in traditional gender role attitudes or nonfeminist attitudes (Ginorio, Gutierrez, Cauce, & Acosta, 1995; Reid, Haritos, Kelly, & Holland, 1995), which in turn may contribute to lower levels of career achievement.
In addition, parental factors, such as occupation and educational level, were found to relate to academic achievement and parental involvement in Mexican American students’ educational and career planning (Keith & Lichtman, 1994). With regard to the influence of mothers, having a mother who attended college was predictive of college attendance and persistence among Latinas (Cardoza, 1991). However, other studies that assessed the role of parents’ educational or occupational attainment in children’s educational and career aspirations reported no relation (Fisher & Padmawidjaja, 1999; Hernandez et al., 1994; Hess & D’Amato, 1996; Lango, 1995; Reyes et al., 1999), possibly because of the highly skewed number of parents with lower educational and occupational levels in these samples. The influence of mothers’ educational level and occupational traditionality were included in the present study to determine their influence on daughters’ career development.
According to SCCT, these background varia
