Personal goals of young social drop-outs.

To examine the extent to which personal goals and their appraisals are associated with problems in socialization, 20 young 'social drop-outs' (15 men, 5 women) and 21 students from a vocational school (20 men, 1 woman) were interviewed about their personal goals, related views of internality, externality, and likelihood of accomplishing goals. Analysis indicated that young adults who showed problems in socialization mentioned less frequently personal goals related to future education and housing than did the control group. Second, social drop-outs held more external and less internal views and were less optimistic about accomplishing personal goals than was the control group.