THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN ONLINE INTERVENTION PROGRAM IN VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Abstract

The current study is a test-retest design with the presence of both experimental and control groups. We proposed to present information about an online intervention program for reducing career decision-making difficulties (caused by lack of information, lack of readiness and inconsistent information) and to present results of its effectiveness. This research was designed in 2020 and the intervention program (7 sessions) started at the beginning of lock down due to COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 11th high school students from Chişinău, Moldova. 13 students participated in the experimental group, which attended at least 6 of 7 online sessions and 18 in the control group. Career decision-making difficulties ware assessed with the CDDQ – Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (Gati & Osipow, 2000). We found that there are differences between the results obtained by the participants of the intervention program and the results of the students in the control group for the lack of readiness scale (F (1, 29) = 16.388, p = 0.000). There was a reduction of career decision-making difficulties caused by lack of readiness for the experimental group, at the time of the retest (t(12)=3.30, p=0.006, Mretest=4.02) compared to the initial testing (Mtest =5.36) and at the time of the retest for the experimental group (Mretest=3.51) compared to the control group (Mretest= 4.04). After attending the intervention, differences related to the lack of information scale were recorded (F(1, 29)=16.925, p=0.000). Students in the experimental group obtained lower scores in the retest moment (t(17)=-3.073, p=0.007, Mretest=3.5128) than in the test moment (Mtest=5.5192). There are no significant differences in retest time between groups, t(29)=0.83, p=0.41. Difficulties caused by inconsistent information did not change between assessment times F(1, 29)=2.273, p=0.142, there are no significant differences between groups t(29)=0.43, p=0.67.