Abstract:
Numerous questions have been raised regarding the influence of personality and occupational choice in educational and health related fields. Basically, the questions have centered on identifying the ideal educator, therapist, or physician for respective settings and populations. This also includes identifying the ideal student for respective college majors. This question has been important to university educators, supervisors in the field, and administrators, who are concerned with the problems of selection and performance.Discussion needs to center on whether there are personality influences in the choice of certain occupations. Speculation exists whether these differences effect academic success. These differences in turn may effect career stability and influence why certain people continue in the field and others change careers. It may appear that an individual's personality may be drawn to a particular occupational setting. Further investigation into a specific field of study may cause one to wonder if a person's personality influences their ability to achieve success or failure in the utilization of particular techniques as well as in the learning of these techniques.Ever since the publication of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in 1962 by Educational Testing Service to measure psychological type, considerable speculation has risen regarding the influence of psychological type, choice of career and college major.Education and health related occupations have been the focus of considerable research efforts beginning with a longitudinal medical specialization study (Meyers and Davis, 1965). The trend has been to investigate populations of either college students in specific majors or practicing professionals in the field to find out the relationship of psychological type to choice and occupational success.The justification for these investigations is the assumption that if certain psychological types choose majors or occupations over others, then there must be an interaction between perceived need and the probability of certain majors to fulfill or satisfy those needs. if a relationship does exist then efforts may be initiated to either attract more similar types or attract more dissimiliar types depending on the schools philosophy or point of view. Speech pathology as a major has had little investigation in this regard.