A Preliminary Study On Group Counseling Strategies For College Students’ Career Planning Based On TA Discounting Theory

Today,college students’expectation of employment is no longer just about finding a job but also having a career that suits their interests and ideals.However,because of the lack of understanding of society and self,career planning counseling has become an important student counseling content at the university stage.This study intends to to revise a standard of identifying discounting level,a part of the Transactional Analysis theory,suitable for career planning assessment,and then strategically apply group career planning counseling based on individual’s discounting levels.The research adopts a qualitative research method.In study 1,through interviews with 30 college students on the specific impact of TA discounting theory on career planning,a set of criteria for discounting levels of subjective evaluation of career planning was formed,and the coding standards were used as the core to develop college students’career planning discounting assessment tool.Then,5 psychology and career planning workers were recruited to code the career topic texts in the interviews according to this assessment tool.Through the inter-rater consistency test,Fleiss Kappa=0.77（p<0.01）,with good consistency.In study 2,8 college students were recruited to take part in a 4-time-group-counseling for career planning based on the TA discounting theory.After all the group counseling,the performance of the 8 college students in the counseling and the verbatim transcripts of the interviews were combined as the data to be coded with the assessment tool from study 1.Coding analysis results show that the discounting level of career planning of all subjects was improved.All the 8 students were improved to more than the 4^thlevel,indicating that the group counseling strategy is effective.Therefore,the discounting level assessment tool for college students’career planning developed in this study can be used to identify the discounting level of college students’career planning.Based on the assessment of participants,we can choose suitable group counseling techniques such as career development concept explanation,TA discounting theory introduction,value clarification,career acting performance,crystal ball,lifeline,action plan,and career contract,helping students gain awareness,improve their discounting level of career planning,and enable individuals to make more effective career planning.