Effectiveness of career-development courses for nontraditional premedical students: improving professional identity

The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of three career-development courses on the professional identities of participating students as measured by My Vocational Situation and to investigate the effect of gender on students' responses to the scale. A total of 64 students enrolled in a special premedical program took the scale as a pretest and again as a posttest after the completion of three career-development courses. Analysis yielded significant differences between pre- and posttest scores for the three subscales of Vocational Identity, Occupational Information, and Barriers. No significant gender differences were observed at pre- or posttest. Implications for further research designed to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention strategies in career development are discussed.