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An evaluation of lifeplanning interventions : comparing a career development course with a personal development course and lifeplanning interviews for women

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of a three-day career development course compared with a six-session personal development course and one-hour life-planning interviews offered to women through the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of British Columbia. The co-ordinator of the Centre's career development program developed the following criteria of success for these interventions: 1. Participants should exhibit nontraditional attitudes towards women's lifestyles. 2. Participants should learn a planning process. 3. Participants should structure their time to increase non-traditional behaviors. 4. Participants should find certain components of the courses or interviews more effective than others. The interventions were offered to adult women in the community. The courses and interviews were evaluated by observation and with responses obtained through questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to obtain information regarding knowledge, awareness, perceptions of the intervention and behaviors of the women related to nontraditional activities. The comparison groups were chosen because they shared the same goals, objectives and were the same target population. Using chi-square, the comparison groups were found to be equivalent on age and education but were significantly different on marital status. Analysis of variance, chi-square and the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test were used to determine significant differences among means (pretest and follow-up) and differences among the comparison groups four weeks following the interventions. The results indicated that: 1. There was a significant increase in reported nontraditional lifestyle attitudes for the career development course, the personal development course and the lifeplanning interview participants. 2. There was a significant increase in reported nontraditional behaviors for the career development course, the personal development course and the lifeplanning interview participants. 3. There were no significant differences in reported planning ability. 4. The career development course was not significantly more effective in increasing nontraditional lifestyle attitudes, nontraditional lifestyle behaviors or planning ability than the personal development course or the lifeplanning interviews. Four weeks following the intervention 62% of the participants reported that they had a planning strategy for their future goals and 85% indicated that they felt much more positive about themselves. The overall meaningfulness of the intervention components was rated highly and was maintained for the four-week follow-up period. It was concluded that the lifeplanning interventions for women were effective in increasing nontraditional lifestyle attitudes and in increasing nontraditional behaviors.

Text

2010-02-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/20961

Education

University of British Columbia

Graduate