Reducing academic and career indecision: the effectiveness of a first-year college program

This article is on the effectiveness of a college program—the Session d'accueil et d'intégration (SAI)— designed to reduce academic and career indecision among first-year college students in Québec (Canada). A repeated measures study involving 973 students (506 enrolled in an SAI, 467 in a major program) enrolled in 21 colleges was used to test the trajectory of indecision and its sources (or indecision-related problems) throughout the first semester. An assessment of indecision sources is one way to identify successful strategies for guidance. Using a quasi-experimental design, a significant improvement in academic and career indecision—as well as in variables lack of self-knowledge, lack of method in decision-making and lack of information—was observed in the SAI group. Counter-intuitively, students enrolled in a major (comparison group) deteriorated on all those indecision sources, as well as dysfunctional belief and external barriers, along the first college semester. This result clearly suggests that when no specific orientation interventions are provided during the first college semester, indecision and its sources increase.

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Indecision ,

First-Year Seminar ,

Career Goal Counseling ,