Student responsiveness to specialized college services: Contribution of personality variables and perceptions of services.

Student responsiveness to an offer of vocational assistance from a college counseling center was studied. Vocationally undecided graduating seniors (130 respondents and 145 nonrespondents) were examined on a set of four variables: state anxiety, locus of control, and perceptions of the relevance (measured with items from Warman's Appropriateness Checklist) and of the helpfulness of the Center (measured with items from Form's Counseling Attitude Scale). After invitational letters were mailed, data were collected within a 2?-week period at selected classrooms or in the counseling center. Multiple discriminant analysis and correlational techniques were used to test the relation among variables. As a set, the four variables contributed significantly to the discrimination between respondents and nonrespondents. Examined separately, only perceptions of relevance and of helpfulness were found to be significantly related to responsiveness. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)