Trends in Powerlessness: A Ten Year Follow-Up

Abstract

This experiment tested the hypothesis that there would be a significant increase in powerlessness scores over a 10 year period. The sample was drawn from a population of college students originally tested in 1964. At the 10 year follow-up, all Ss had graduated from college and were either professionally employed (mostly as teachers) or engaged in child-rearing/home activities. The average age of the 1974 sample was 29 years and consisted of 70 females and 30 males. The test instrument was the adult version of Rotter's Internal-External (I-E) Locus of Control Scale which consists of 23 forced-choice items. There were no significant differences on total I-E scores over the 10 year period. However, with use of the Mirels two-factor scoring system, significant increases in social-political control were found. No significant differences in personal control were found. It was concluded that care should be taken in utilizing cross-sectional findings and that utilizing multidimensional scores suggests different results for previously published reports.

Locus of control of behaviour: is high externality associated with substance misuse?

“…The variables of age, sex and class seem to add very little to our understanding of why certain people score higher than others. Previous research, using similar social psychological constructs, has also found these demographic variables unable to explain variance (see Wilkins, 1975;Strickland & Hayley, 1980;Greene, 1981).…”

Locus of Control, Attribution Theory, and the "Five Deadly Sins" of Aviation

“…A longitudinal study would be desirable, but to this author's knowledge, none is currently in progress. The only published longitudinal studies of LOC known to the present author (Wilkins, 1975;Wolfle & List, 2004: Wolfle & Robertshaw, 1982 were limited in scope in that they only examined changes in LOC over a brief time period in the life cycle. Wilkins found no overall differences in total LOC scores, but a slight increase on the Personal Control subscale, between the ages of 19 to 29 years.…”

Locus of control and maintenance of behavioural therapy skills

“…Pre-treatment locus of control was not significantly related to long-term stuttering frequency ( r = 0.12) or to improvement in stuttering frequency ( r = 0.04). Pre-to 18 months post-treatment change in locus of control had a significant relationship to improvement in stuttering frequency ( r = 0.58, PCO.01).Normal social interactions d o not significantly alter a person's perception of personal control (Wilkins, 1975), and thus any change in perceived control following treatment can be assumed to be the result of treatment.As hypothesized, those clients whose perceptions of control were enhanced after therapy also maintained their improvement in the behaviours acquired during therapy. This is suggested by the substantial correlation of 0.58 between improvement in stuttering and enhancement of perceived control.As the research was of a pilot nature, no causal ascription was sought.…”

“…Normal social interactions d o not significantly alter a person's perception of personal control (Wilkins, 1975), and thus any change in perceived control following treatment can be assumed to be the result of treatment.…”