Developmental Study: Response to Sept 9 Blog Post

I think it would be very interesting to study assumed locus of control at varying stages of development and across gender. Locus of control refers to what a person percieves as causation of a personal outcome or event. Those with an internal locus of control tend to hold the belief that they are in control of their own life or destiny wheras those with an external locus of control believe that their decisions and situations are controlled by environmental factors or things that they cannot influence. I would like to study whether people of different age groups tend to, in general, have the same locus. Locus of control is definitely not something that can be measured with observation or really very well by experiment so I would test this by using a self report survey. This survey would contain 50 personality questions and 50 situational questions. These questions would be somewhat of short stories or vignettes describing a character and a situation in which some life change or event happens to that character. The subject would then respond by circling one of two answers that is closest to their feeling about the outcome of the short story. One answer would be heavily themed to the way someone with an internal locus of control would react, the other, the way someone with an external locus of control would. Such a survey could even be simplified and shortened to study children. The survey would be quantitatively scored using a point system. Different responses to the personality questions would be weighted in a manner which would give external locus responders more points, and internal locus responders zero or fewer points. The situation questions would be scored objectively as well, one point given for an answer that favors external locus and zero points for an answer that favors an internal locus. Using this point system it would be possible to numerically determine and categorize the extent to which someone holds each locus. From this point, it would be simple to graphically plot age distribution and percent of population holding each locus as well as gender versus locus. I hypothesize that older people would hold a stronger internal locus of control while youger groups would have a higher frequency of externalizers. It would be very interesting to see if there was any correlation between age and locus, then to examine the possibilities of why that phenomena exists. Does advancing age and the wisdom that comes with it favor one locus? Do younger generations with less life experience, developing in a more globally connected and overwhelming world give preference to one locus? Are males and females the same or quite different in their perceptions and concequently, their loci?