TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of ethnically matched animated agents (Avatars) in the cognitive restructuring of irrational career beliefs held by young women
T2 - Diverse findings from four randomized clinical trials
AU - Hacker, Robyn L.
AU - Hardy, Amanda O.
AU - Webster, Jacqueline
AU - Zhang, Xue
AU - Horan, John J.
AU - Atkinson, Robert
AU - Homer, Judith
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0631754). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Additional support was obtained by a grant from Oddcast Corporation.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2015, IGI Global.
PY - 2015/7/1
Y1 - 2015/7/1
N2 - The Believe It! program developed and evaluated by Kovalski & Horan (1999) was the first interactive, multimedia, psychological-education intervention deployed on the Internet. In a controlled study, the authors reported that the ethnically diverse cartoon models were partially successful in using cognitive restructuring to promote more reasonable career beliefs among Caucasian middle-school young women. It was not clear if the program's lack of efficacy among minority young women was due to computer literacy factors affected by SES. Subsequently, four studies explored the role of matching or mismatching the ethnicity of animated agents in a graphically enhanced program with young women receiving the cognitive restructuring treatment. Each of the studies used the same four outcome measures (Occupational Sex-Role Questionnaire, Believe It Measure, Career Beliefs Inventory, and the Career Myths Scale) before and after matched and mismatched participants received the Believe It! intervention. Webster (2010) analyzed data from African-American participants, Hardy (2011) Latinas, Zhang (2013) Asian-Americans, and Hacker (2014) ethnically isolated Caucasian young women. The current article reports that the results of these four studies are consistent with similar research involving live counselor and client dyads (e.g., Cabral & Smith, 2011). The Believe It! program had a clear impact on ethnically matched African-American young women, whereas pairings on ethnicity produced, at best, marginally improved outcomes for Latinas, Asian-Americans, and ethnically isolated Caucasian young women.
AB - The Believe It! program developed and evaluated by Kovalski & Horan (1999) was the first interactive, multimedia, psychological-education intervention deployed on the Internet. In a controlled study, the authors reported that the ethnically diverse cartoon models were partially successful in using cognitive restructuring to promote more reasonable career beliefs among Caucasian middle-school young women. It was not clear if the program's lack of efficacy among minority young women was due to computer literacy factors affected by SES. Subsequently, four studies explored the role of matching or mismatching the ethnicity of animated agents in a graphically enhanced program with young women receiving the cognitive restructuring treatment. Each of the studies used the same four outcome measures (Occupational Sex-Role Questionnaire, Believe It Measure, Career Beliefs Inventory, and the Career Myths Scale) before and after matched and mismatched participants received the Believe It! intervention. Webster (2010) analyzed data from African-American participants, Hardy (2011) Latinas, Zhang (2013) Asian-Americans, and Hacker (2014) ethnically isolated Caucasian young women. The current article reports that the results of these four studies are consistent with similar research involving live counselor and client dyads (e.g., Cabral & Smith, 2011). The Believe It! program had a clear impact on ethnically matched African-American young women, whereas pairings on ethnicity produced, at best, marginally improved outcomes for Latinas, Asian-Americans, and ethnically isolated Caucasian young women.
KW - Avatars
KW - Believe it!
KW - Career beliefs
KW - Cognitive restructuring
KW - Ethnicity
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U2 - 10.4018/IJCBPL.2015070101
DO - 10.4018/IJCBPL.2015070101
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945252183
SN - 2155-7136
VL - 5
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning
JF - International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning
IS - 3
ER -