Abstract

The concept of locus of control as a personality characteristic clarifies the differences between two tendencies of a person to assign his/her influence on his/her life events. It is either the person's tendency to explain his/her life events as something he/she cannot control by himself/herself or the person's tendency to explain the events as events he/she can control. The article presents the data of a study ascertaining the locus of control in Bachelor university students of economic and technical disciplines (N=42) and in students of humanistic social work studies (N=44) from two South Bohemian universities. The study made use of a standardized questionnare with 24 itrems at IPC scale, consisting of three subscales: I - internality (i.e. the person percieves himself/herself as the one who has control over his/her life), P (the person percieves the life as influenced by important people) and C (persons with a high score percieve the world as chaotic and unpredictable, they do not believe to be able to control their lives, they see their good results as consequences of chance and good luck). The data were statistically evaluated in order to identify the difference in locus of control in both groups. The t-test results show a significant relation between student groups in the internality score (p=0.038) where students of economic and technical disciplines achieved a higher score (13.38) as compared to students of social work (9.54). However, no statistically significant relation was found at the dimension of control by important people (-7.08 and -5.19) or at the dimension of control by chance (-3.73 and -5.56). So it can be stated that the students of social work tend rather to explain events based on external factors, while students of economic and technical disciplines explain them rather based on internal factors. The control by chance can be found the least often in university students. The study will also compare the locus of control of university students with other subpopulation.

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