The Student Network Apr 97

Before previewing this edition's Student Network article, we would like to recognize all the I/O psychology graduate students at Radford University, located in southwestern Virginia, for making this year's IOOB Graduate Conference a success. For those unfamiliar with the conference, IOOB (Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior) is a vehicle designed specifically to allow graduate students to share research ideas, present qualitative, quantitative, and theoretical papers, and meet students with similar interests. The theme for this year's conference was "The Changing Workforce: Building Up or Breaking Down Organizations." Success of the conference was the result of great effort by the co-chairs, David Cohen and Armand Spoto, and literally every I/O graduate student at Radford, each of whom worked on at least one conference committee. The conference featured over 90 presentations, the most ever in IOOB history, by students representing over 25 universities from across the United States and Canada. Several new features that Radford implemented in this year's IOOB deserve special recognition. A Job Placement Service provided us with opportunities to meet with representatives from consulting groups and universities, providing students access to both internships and permanent positions. Also, the conference featured the first "IOOB Jeopardy" challenge. Teams of graduate students representing their respective programs competed in school-to-school competition, testing their knowledge in pursuit of the coveted First Annual IOOB Cup (we will report the winning program and "Cup Holder" in the July column). Also, on behalf of all conference participants we thank SIOP for sponsoring a reception in celebration of the society's 50th Golden Anniversary and special thanks to all the organizations who sponsored this year's conference, including Personnel Decisions International (PDI), Center for Creative Leadership, Brooks/Cole Publishing, SIOP, and the New River and Roanoke chapters of the Society for Human Resource Management. Thanks again Radford for a GREAT conference! Next year's conference is scheduled for Spring 1998 in San Diego, California and is being put together by the folks at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego. So mark your calendars now and plan to attend this fun, informative, and helpful event.

The following article summarizes the results of the Student Network Survey from last year. One of the survey items addressed a unique issue; the item asked respondents if they desire to have access to, and participate in, an electronic bulletin board for I/O graduate students. The sample reported great interest in having an electronic bulletin board; in response, plans for an electronic board are underway. Look for more information in the July column of the Student Network.

Results of the Student Network Survey: Students'

Backgrounds, Graduate Program Choices, Career

Aspirations, and Graduate School Experiences

Greg E. Loviscky

Pennsylvania State University

Bryan C. Hayes and Alexis A. Fink

Old Dominion University

A survey of current I/O graduate students was included in the July, 1995 edition of "The Student Network." The survey content was derived from interviews with SIOP student members in order to tap into issues that both graduate students and faculty may find interesting. The survey results are summarized into four sections. The Background Information section provides a "snap-shot" of the current population of I/O graduate students. This information includes demographics, education, and work-related information. The Graduate Program Choice section reports which factors graduate students consider when making their decisions about which program to attend. The Career Aspirations section provides data on career objectives of current students and identifies factors used by students in making career decisions. The final section provides insight into the I/O graduate student experience of the 1990s.

In total, 88 SIOP student members provided usable surveys. We thank everyone who completed a survey, and even more thanks to those few who took it upon themselves to collect responses from their fellow program members. We hope you find this information interesting and thought provoking.

Background Information

Demographics. The majority of respondents were female (72.7%), and Caucasian (Caucasian = 84.0%; African-American = 5.7%; Hispanic/Latino = 5.7%; Asian/Pacific Islander = 2.3%; 2.3% did not respond to this item). The average age of respondents was 27 years old (M = 27.07; SD = 6.27), and ages ranged from 22 to 51 years old.

Education. In terms of educational background, the sample was fairly evenly split on highest degree held (Master's = 46.6%; Bachelor's = 53.4%). Although most of the sample had undergraduate training in psychology (79.5%), 10.2% held undergraduate degrees in business and 10.3% held degrees in a variety of other fields. Most respondents were enrolled in a Ph.D. program (Ph.D. = 75.0%; Master's = 22.7%; other = 2.3%). Students from all stages of graduate school were represented in the sample (first year = 14.6%; second year = 23.9%; third year = 22.7%; fourth year = 19.3%; fifth year = 8.0%; sixth year = 5.7%; seventh year = 1.2%; other = 4.6%). Most respondents (86.4%) reported that their plans are to earn a Ph.D., although 13.6% were seeking a Master's degree. Finally, the vast majority of students in the sample were enrolled in I/O psychology programs (I/O = 89.8%; Organizational Behavior = 3.4%; other = 4.5%; General Psychology = 2.3%).

Professional experience. In the April, 1995 "Student Network" column, Maahs and Major encouraged students to take advantage of the opportunities in graduate school to gain experience relevant to their career goals. It appears that students are doing just that. Although the overall level of work experience varied widely (M = 3.35 years, SD = 4.93, range: 0 to 23 years), students seem to be preparing themselves for careers in academia or practice. A full two-thirds (67%) of the students had taught a college-level class. Regarding publication experience, the majority of students had not (yet) contributed to a published article, 34.1% had. About half (51.1%) of respondents had given a presentation at a professional convention. Students are also gaining applied experiences in a variety of ways. A full 78.4% of students reported that they received applied experience during graduate school, and that those experiences came in a variety of forms. The greatest percentage of applied opportunities occurred by means of internships (30.1%). However, students pursued a variety of avenues other than internships to gain applied experience, including practica (27.7%), extracurricular activities (20.4%), and others (e.g., assistantships, grants, and theses; 21.8%).

Graduate Program Choice

We can all recall, probably with a little wince, the fairly grueling graduate school application process. We invested plenty of blood, sweat, and money in the process so that we could pursue our desired career paths. Once we sent the applications, we played the waiting game, received responses to our applications, and chose a program from those that accepted us. But on what factors did we base our decisions? We asked students to identify those factors used in making their choice of graduate program. The top factors reported by survey respondents were geographic location, availability of funding, and program curriculum. Of secondary importance were anticipated applied opportunities, program reputation, similarity of personal and faculty research interests, presence of a specific faculty member, and social climate of the program. Two factors emerged as unimportant in the decision process: faculty publishing rate and availability of other options.

Career Aspirations

Academia versus applied. The career aspirations portion of the survey was designed to allow students to report their preferences in terms of the desirability of career paths, as well as the factors that affect their career choices. Students responded to questions regarding desirability of four career paths: teaching in a private institution, teaching in a public institution, internal consulting, external consulting. Item responses were made by means of a 5-point Likert-type scale of agreement with 1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neutral, and 5 = strongly agree. We wanted to determine the percentage of those students pursuing the various career options. Therefore, we classified students based on their ratings; for example, a student rating "teaching in a public institution" with a 4 or 5 was classified as desiring a teaching career. As a result, 5 students were classified as desiring both a teaching and practitioner career. Overall, most students indicated a desire to consult (70.7%) with no strong preference for an internal over external position (internal M = 4.34, SD = 1.03; external M = 4.23, SD = 0.98). Fewer students indicated a desire to teach (29.3%) and those that did expressed a slight preference to teach in a public institution (public M = 4.32, SD = 1.31; private M = 3.82, SD = 1.25). These figures indicate a general trend of I/O students intending to go into practice versus academia.

Influences of career choice. The same 5-point scale response format was used to rate the extent to which five factors affected career choice: nature of work, job market/opportunities, job security, salary potential, and lifestyle. Across all respondents, all five factors were cited as important in making a career choice: nature of work (M = 4.54, SD = 0.62), lifestyle (M = 4.13, SD = 0.92), job market/opportunities (M = 4.05, SD = 0.87), job security (M = 3.81, SD = 0.96), and salary potential (M = 3.81, SD = 0.90). In addition, we tested whether students intending to be academicians used different factors to make career choices than those seeking careers as consultants. Only one difference emerged (F (1,87) = 3.71, p < .10); students aspiring to be consultants rated job market/opportunities as more important (M = 4.17, SD = 0.78) in making career decisions than students choosing academic careers (M = 3.72, SD = 1.16).

Previous Student Network columns have addressed the importance of building a portfolio of publications for students seeking academic positions (Greguras & Stanton, 1996) and the importance of receiving relevant experience for those students seeking applied positions (Sebolsky, Brady & Wagner, 1996). Survey respondents rated the perceived importance of graduate school accomplishments for achieving long term career success. Here, several differences emerged between students seeking academic versus consulting careers. Students seeking an academic career rated a strong publication record (M = 3.82, SD = 1.29) and teaching experience (M = 4.18, SD = 0.50) as significantly more important (F (1,87) = 16.12, p < .05 and F (1,87) = 20.97, p < .05, respectively) to their long term success than those seeking careers as consultants (M = 2.64, SD = 1.09 and M = 3.19, SD = 0.96, respectively). Students seeking consulting careers rated attainment of applied experience (M = 4.72, SD = 0.72) as more important (F (1,87) = 6.45, p < .05) than did those seeking academic careers (M = 4.14, SD = 1.24). It appears students are well aware of the criteria on which they will be judged and are selectively pursuing activities that will enhance their marketability upon graduation.

Graduate School Experiences

Common problems. Certain obstacles are a part of the graduate school experience. Although these obstacles are different for each individual, we asked students to identify the extent to which they had experienced several common challenges. According to responses obtained using the 5-point scale of agreement, only adequacy of guidance (M = 3.30, SD = 1.31), quantity of work (M = 3.22, SD = 1.32), role conflict (M = 3.12, SD = 1.28), and ambiguity about requirements (M = 3.09, SD = 1.21) were problems for students. Other potential problems (time management, difficulty of work, lack of social support, and motivation) had means of less than 3.0, thus were not considered significant problems by the respondents.

Satisfaction. An additional set of questions asked respondents how satisfied they were with specific aspects of their educational career. In general, students felt that their undergraduate experience adequately prepared them for graduate school (M = 3.64, SD = 1.32). Also, they were generally satisfied with their graduate school experience (M = 3.61, SD = 1.05), although data indicated a potential negative correlation between satisfaction and year in graduate school (r = -19, p < .10) , indicating that more advanced students may be less satisfied with their graduate school experience. Additionally, students reported slight dissatisfaction with their socialization into their respective graduate programs (M = 2.89, SD = 1.25).

Social lives? The final portion of the survey addressed students' social lives. Faculty everywhere can rest assured that they are keeping us busy enough. Students reported that their social life had changed for the worse since entering graduate school (M = 4.03, SD = 1.23), but were fairly neutral in their overall assessments of their social lives (M = 3.08, SD = 1.59).

Summary

Most I/O graduate students appear to come from undergraduate psychology programs, although a fair percentage are coming from business schools. Most graduate students intend to achieve a Ph.D. The majority of students plan to enter applied jobs with no strong preference for an internal or external position. Consistent with this, the vast majority of students are receiving applied experience as part of their formal graduate training. Of interest is the finding that concerns about the job market and job opportunities was the only career choice factor that distinguished aspiring academicians from practitioners, with the practitioners putting greater emphasis on this variable.

Regarding factors that affected choice of graduate program, it was surprising that geographic location was the most highly rated of all items listed. However, other factors that may be under the control of faculty members (e.g., curriculum, availability of applied opportunities) were also rated as important to students. In addition, students reported being satisfied with their overall graduate school experience, but did not feel that they were adequately socialized into their graduate programs. This is a factor that both faculty and graduate students can influence. We hope that you have found the survey results both informative and interesting.

References

Greguras, G. J., & Stanton, J. M. (1996). Three Considerations for I/O Graduate Students Seeking Academic Positions: Publish, Publish, Publish. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 33(3), 92-98.

Maahs, C. J., & Major, D. A., (1995). Does your graduate program fully prepare you to enter the professional world? The Industrial-Organi-zational Psychologist, 32(4), 90-93.

Sebolsky, J. R., Brady, A. L., & Wagner, S. (1996). Want an Applied Job?-Get Experience!! The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 33(4), 65-70.