The Impact of Ethnically Matched Animated Agents (Avatars) in the Cognitive Restructuring of Irrational Career Beliefs Held by Young Women: Diverse Findings from Four Randomized Clinical Trials

Robyn L. Hacker, Amanda O. Hardy, Jacqueline Webster, Xue (Yidan) Zhang, John J. Horan, Robert K. Atkinson and Judith Homer
Additional contact information
Robyn L. Hacker: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Amanda O. Hardy: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Jacqueline Webster: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Xue (Yidan) Zhang: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
John J. Horan: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Robert K. Atkinson: School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Judith Homer: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL), 2015, vol. 5, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: The Believe It! program developed and evaluated by 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. analyzed data from African-American participants, Latinas, Asian-Americans, and 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., ). 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.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... 18/IJCBPL.2015070101 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jcbpl0:v:5:y:2015:i:3:p:1-12

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL) is currently edited by Nadia Mansour Bouzaida

More articles in International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().