Getting Through to Them: Reaching Students Who Need Career Counseling

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a persuasive message, designed using the theory of planned behavior (TOPB; I. Ajzen, 1985) and written in the form of a student newspaper column, on undecided students' intent to seek career counseling from an informed source, such as a career counseling workshop. An experiment was conducted to test TOPB's applicability, and it was found that a message using positive reinforcement of salient beliefs and creating positive links between outcomes and workshop attendance caused a change in behavioral intention toward a greater reported likelihood of workshop attendance.