Olbrich, Julie (2010) Exploring the Relationship Between Personal Attributes and Happenstance Learning Experiences. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
This study aimed to (a) explore the relationship between the six personal attributes of planfulness, curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk taking identified by Neault (2002) as associated with happenstance and happenstance learning experiences, and (b) determine if there were significant differences between the personal attributes of people who had experienced happenstance learning in their career histories and those who had not. A total of 152 participants comprised undergraduate psychology students and individuals from the researcher’s own social circle. Participants were aged between 18 and 66 plus years; 46 were male and 104 were female. An online, randomly ordered 60-item Personal Attribute Survey constructed from six personality scales taken from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006) was used to measure the six personal attributes via participants’ responses on a 5-point Likert scale. A Career Choice Survey was designed by the researcher and comprised of three short-answer questions used to classify individuals as having experienced happenstance learning in their career history or not. A two-group, multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant differences between those who had experienced happenstance learning (HLE) and those who had not (no HLE). Follow-up univariate analyses of variance indicated that the differences found between the HLE and no HLE groups were significant across each of the six personal attributes. A discriminant function analysis found that the attributes that contributed significantly to discriminating between those who had or had not experienced happenstance learning were persistence, followed by risk taking and then planfulness. A significant discriminant function revealed that almost three quarters of adults could be correctly classified as HLE or no HLE. It is suggested that career counsellors could utilise results from measures of personal attributes to increase individual’s propensity to take advantage of happenstance learning events during their career development. Future empirical studies could consider using a different tool to measure the personality attributes identified by Neault (2002), and could also investigate the differential and combined effects of the six personal attributes and happenstance learning on promoting career development.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | du Preez, Jan |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Psychology) |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2026 01:18 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2026 01:18 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52630 |
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