A visual narrative intervention – Serious Storytelling with Images – was proposed to manage interview anxiety and performance. Its ability to evocate significant incidents and enhance narratives construction was evaluated ideographically in two case studies. The findings suggest varying levels of sophistication in interviewee actions, challenges encountered, and perceived roles of images. Counselors can refer to the hierarchical concepts when tailoring interview training and coaching. Further investigation is highly recommended to confirm and measure intervention effects.
This paper reports the quantitative findings of a study on conceptions of positive career outcomes held by Chinese students who returned home to work after gaining higher education qualifications in Australia. The study explores what positive career outcomes mean to Chinese returnees, the actual positive career outcomes Chinese returnees have experienced and contributing factors to the positive career outcomes achieved. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used and here the analysis of the quantitative findings is presented. The survey data show that Chinese returnees assign greater importance to ‘soft outcomes’ relating to personal and life fulfilment than ‘hard outcomes’ such as employment results. Also, the discrepancy between the returnees’ ideal and actual outcomes is greater in the soft outcomes than the hard outcomes. Statistical analysis indicates three emergent, distinct groups of conceptions of positive career outcomes. The qualitative findings will be presented separately.
Serious storytelling as a media genre has the potential to accentuate the benefits of narrative interventions in health and education. To inform its application, it is necessary to identify effects of sensory inputs. Here, we focus on visual stimuli and observe their effects on an anxiety condition. We examine whether serious storytelling incorporating images, a type of basic visual stimuli, may reduce interview performance anxiety. In a double-blind randomised control trial, 69 participants with matched levels of anxiety received serious storytelling interview training and were allocated to exposure (image-based preparation) and control (standard preparation) groups. A week later, participants attended individual interviews with two independent interviewers and reported their interview anxiety. Analyses revealed a positive relationship between generalised anxiety and some dimensions of interview anxiety, but serious storytelling with images predicted a reduction in interview performance anxiety (effect size at the median value of covariates on a visual analogue scale with the range 0–100: -36.7, 95% CI [−54.7, −2.5]). Low participation burden in the brief intervention was confirmed through a deductive thematic analysis. The images were analysed based on format type and origin to inform further inquiries. This study yielded empirical findings with implications of media and technology development for serious storytelling. Seeing images of experiences during interview preparation was associated with a relief of interviewees’ anxiety towards interview performance, but further studies are necessary to consolidate the evidence for visual narrative applications in health and education.
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