NCJ Number
91547
Journal
Journal of Offender Counseling Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Dated: (October 1983) Pages: 21-27
Date Published
1983
Length
7 pages
Annotation
The Harrington-O'Shea System for Career Decision Making (CDM) was used to compare the career interests of male college students in prison with those of community college and national male norm samples.
Abstract
The participants were 84 male prisoners in five New York State prisons, with 36 being held in maximum security prisons with time remaining from 3 years to life and 48 in medium security facilities, with no more than 3 years remaining of their sentences. All were enrolled in college programs or had completed some college while in prison. Participation in the testing was voluntary. The CDM is a self-scored interest inventory that provides scores on six scales that correspond closely to Holland's six personality types. The six CDM types and their corresponding Holland types are craft (realistic), scientific (investigative), arts (artistic), social (social), business (enterprising), and clerical (conventional). The group norms of the male prisoners' CDM profiles were compared with national male norms and with a reported norm group that closely approximated theirs -- that of male college students at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York. The male inmates scored higher than the national male norm sample on most scales as expected. This may reflect their educational level and supports the findings of Harrington and O'Shea (1976b). When compared with the norm group demographically similar to theirs, i.e., an urban community-college male sample that was primarily black or of Spanish origin, the male inmates' scores were slightly lower on all scales except the social scale. These scores may reflect a more disadvantaged educational background, a heightened sensitivity to failure, and lower vocational aspirations. Male inmates in maximum security facilities scored lower than those in medium security facilities on all but the arts scale, perhaps because of the maximum-security inmates' understandably lower motivation for career exploration. Tabular data and 10 references are provided.