Artistic orientation as a clinical indicator of chronic career indecision in adult children and grandchildren of alcoholics.

This study has empirically assessed whether artistic orientation and avoidance are good predictors of chronic career indecision for college-attending adult children and grandchildren of alcoholics. The sample consisted of 143 freshman and sophomore introductory psychology students attending a county college in the northeast. Osipow's Career Decision Scale total scores of artistically oriented children and grandchildren of alcoholics were not significantly higher than scores of those who were not artistic. As predicted, the Career Decision Scale total scores of avoidant subjects were significantly higher than those of nonavoidant subjects. As expected in both instances, no differences were found between artistic subjects and nonartistic subjects or between the avoidant and nonavoidant subjects. The findings suggest (1) that the artistic career-undecided children of alcoholics observed by Schumrum and Hartman in 1988 were, in fact, members of a broader avoidant group and (2) that the relationship between career indecision and avoidant personality style does vary according to family status of whether subjects are adult children and grandchildren of alcoholics.