Search

This research examines the effects of a class‐level intervention for career indecision variables. A repeated measures intervention study was used to examine the efficacy of a 16‐week career exploration course on decreasing career indecision variables. Results showed significant improvement in lack of readiness, choice/commitment anxiety, and neuroticism/negative affectivity. Interpersonal conflicts remained stable. Overall, we found the class‐level intervention had a significant effect on decreasing college students’ career indecision.

Student military veterans pursuing higher education present with unique career development needs. To better understand these needs, the authors conducted an exploratory study to examine career transition readiness, career adaptability, academic satisfaction, and satisfaction with life among 134 student military veterans (34 women, 100 men). Results indicated statistically significant positive correlations between satisfaction with life scores and scores on measures of career transition readiness and career adaptability. Regression results demonstrated that career transition readiness and career adaptability predicted satisfaction with life, but not academic satisfaction. The findings suggest a need to understand the complexity of student veterans’ career and academic development in both research and practice.

This study examined the specific career‐related behaviors of career adaptability and occupational engagement among student veterans (N= 100). Contrary to expectations, findings showed statistically significant negative correlations between career adaptability resources (control, concern, curiosity, and confidence) and occupational engagement. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the curiosity resource of career adaptability significantly predicted occupational engagement. The findings suggest a need to understand the complexity of career adaptability and occupational engagement in both research and practice for student veterans.

Previous research has highlighted the employment needs of recent college graduates, focusing on the specific challenges members of this group encounter as they transition into the workforce. This study examined graduating seniors (N= 164) during their senior year of college as they transitioned to the workforce, investigating career adaptability and social support. Results from multiple regression analyses found that the concern resource of career adaptability was significantly predicted by social support. Implications and future directions are highlighted.

The article presents the views of psychology scholars including Susan Blackmore, Marcy Driscoll and Patrick Parrish on psychology and also presents views of scholars on educational technology. It mentions Blackmore who reflected on psychedelic drugs or practicing long-term meditation. It also mentions Parrish who stated that goal-oriented activity is supported by active metacognitive control by students and presents views of Driscoll.

The perception of career barriers has the potential to influence individuals' career choice processes and facilitate or detract from their realising their career goals. Grade 12 black (n= 90) and Grades 11 (n= 140) and 12 (n= 118) white high school learners completed a semi-structured questionnaire asking whether gender discrimination, racial or ethnic discrimination, personal characteristics or other factors were perceived as barriers to progressing in the career they would like to enter. The majority of learners did not perceive gender discrimination or personal characteristics as possible career barriers. Racial or ethnic discrimination as perceived career barriers were most problematic for Grade 11 white learners (56%), but also of concern to the other two samples (40% to 44%).

This article presents the author's perspective about the strengths of vocational psychology, which includes its quantitative foundation, empirical evidence on the career concerns of college students, its theory-driven research, focus on vocational assessment, and its professional organization. Weaknesses of the field include its overemphasis on quantitative methodologies, its lack of focus on contextual factors, class-bound perceptions of work, and the parochial view that limits collaboration with and knowledge from other fields. Opportunities for growth exist in the areas of technology, governmental policies, and changes to the workforce. External threats to vocational psychology incorporate appropriation of vocational psychology by other subdisciplines and appropriation of the practice of vocational counseling by others. The author concludes this analysis with dreams of the future in vocational psychology in the areas of training, science, practice, and social advocacy. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

This study applied causal modeling techniques to the Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) model of person, contextual, and experiential factors affecting career-related choice behavior. The effects of family context and person input variables on learning experiences, self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, interests, and goals were examined. Data on undergraduate students (n = 791) enrolled in psychology classes at two universities were collected. Results based on a revised path model provided empirical validation of the Lent et al. (1994) model for this college student population. As a family background context variable, parental encouragement was found to have significant direct effects on learning experiences (grades in math and science) and outcome expectancies. Significant direct effects were also found between gender and learning experiences and age and learning experiences. In turn, learning experiences were found to directly influence self-efficacy and outcome expectancies, while self-efficacy and outcome expectancies were both directly related to interests and goals. Self-efficacy also had a significant direct effect on outcome expectancies and interests had a significant direct effect on goals. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

In the 21st century, the way we assess career interests will change in response to a revolution in the world of work. The changes in the world of work include information technology, globalization, a change to the service sector, and the increasing diversity in the work force. Clients will need assessment of clusters of interests, skill-sets, values, relational skills, and adaptability because they will seek employment that fits these clusters, rather than seeking an occupational title, and will need to seek employment many times over their life spans. Assessments will need to incorporate up to the moment data on employment trends, hiring practices, skill-level requirements, and corporate cultures to better position the individual in vocational self-understanding. Assessments will begin earlier and extend later into life as people better manage their preparation for serial career associations with employers.

Research on Asian American career development has found that Asian Americans' occupational interests are typically predominant in the Investigative and Realistic areas and that they may pursue a limited range of occupations. This study investigates factors that might influence Asian Americans' career choices and tests Lent et al.'s model to investigate the relationships among the predicting variables and the outcome variable (career choice) for 187 college students. Variables investigated are level of acculturation, family SES, family involvement, occupational interests, and career self-efficacy. It was hypothesized that career choices are influenced by the predicting variables in such a way that lower acculturated individuals tend to choose more typical occupations (i.e., Realistic and Investigative occupations), that family background is influential on their choices, and that interest may not necessarily be related to their occupational choices. The results generally support the path model in explaining the factors influencing Asian American career choices. Asian Americans are influenced by acculturation, family background, and self-efficacy in choosing occupations. Implications are discussed for working with the Asian American population.Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

Procedures were examined for determining the culture-appropriateness of two instruments used frequently by school psychologists: one was designed for a high-school and adult population, and the other for use with young children. Traditional translation procedures as outlined by Butcher (1982) are detailed, using the example of the cross-cultural Spanish translation and validation of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, an interest inventory used in vocational school psychology. These traditional translation and validation procedures are not appropriate, however, for achievement tests, and an alternate non-traditional content validation procedure is outlined, using the Bracken Basic Concept Scale as a pre-school example.

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis was used to analyze the structure of interests of the Women- and Men-in-General samples used in the revision of the 1985 Strong Interest Inventory (Hansen & Campbell, 1985). In the present study, the intercorrelation matrices of the Strong Interest Inventory General Occupational Themes, for the 1985 Women-in-General and Men-in-General Reference Samples, were separately submitted to MDS. Results from earlier analyses that found sex differences in the structure of interests (Feldman & Meir, 1976; Rounds, Davison, & Dawis, 1979; Utz & Korben, 1976) may have been confounded because matched-interest samples were not used. Subjects for the Women-in-General and Men-in-General samples used in this study were selected with the specific intention of matching the interests of females and males by choosing participants who were matched on occupational title. The obtained two-dimensional solutions demonstrated a gender difference in the underlying structure of interests for these reference groups. Possible explanations and implications of these results are discussed.Copyright 1993, 1999 Academic Press

This study was designed to obtain validity evidence for the Middle School Self-Efficacy Scale, a measure of self-efficacy, outcome-expectancy and intentions and goals in career decision making or mathematics/science.

This article reviews the literature on vocational choice, decision-making, vocational assessment, and career counseling interventions for the years 1991-1993. Articles chosen for review were those that focused on pre-entry behavior for individuals, as opposed to vocational behavior after employment or from an organizational perspective. The literature is summarized in each major section, with general summary comments made about the literature at the end of the paper. General methodological concerns are delineated, and recommendations are made for future research.Copyright 1994, 1999 Academic Press

A survey of counseling psychology (CP) training directions (N= 34), housed partly or completely in colleges of education, revealed that the most frequently cited benefits of being housed in education were compatibility of the CP program with the college mission, the esteem it which the CP progratm7 was held in the college, and the accessibility of related programs in educational and school psychology. The most frequently cited disadvantages involved the perception that psychologist colleagues (e.g., licensing boards) did not find education hou0sing credible, lack of fit with the K-12 mission, and limited funding. CP respondents preferred to be housed in education and would choose it if given the chance. Thus, although some advantages and disadvantages of housing in education were reported, no widespread dissatisfaction was found.

Recently some investigators (e.g., Carter & Swanson, 1990; Fouad, 1993; Fouad, Harmon, & Hansen, 1994; Ward & Bingham, 1993) have questioned whether interest inventories may be appropriately used for all clients, or whether gender or race/ethnicity affects the use of interest inventories. This article will discuss use of interest inventories with special groups and will conclude with a discussion of the benefits and cautions of interest inventories in career counseling.

Career assessment with Latinos/Hispanics in the United States is a topic that is attracting attention among test users and test takers. Latino/Hispanic clients and their counselors are asking if tests administered to them are fair, or useful. Counselors are wondering what effect language proficiency has on test taking, and how culture, socioeconomic status, and racial/ethnic identity may affect both taking and interpreting the results of assessment tools. Decisions on whether a test is useful or valid for Latinos/Hispanics depends on the psychometric aspects of the test itself, as well as culturally appropriate interpretation of the test. This article will present demographic characteristics of Latinos/Hispanics, identify some of the measurement issues involved in testing Latinos/Hispanics, review some of the cultural values of Latinos/Hispanics, and briefly discuss interpretation of vocational tests within the context of culturally appropriate career counseling.

This article will present data on two studies investigating vocational correlates of attitudes towards work/family balance. The first study was designed to measure the relationship between attitude toward balancing work and family (Gilbert, Dancer, Rossman, & Thorn, 1991), and two variables: college major and vocational aspirations. Two hundred forty-nine women from six college majors participated in Study 1 (engineering, chemistry, communication, sociology, education, and nursing). The second study investigated whether women who are in a traditional college major (education, N = 39) are less congruent than those in a non- traditional major (engineering, N = 24) or a neutral field (communication, N = 9 and sociology, N = 7), and if they differ in their intentions to balance work and family. Results indicated that women in traditional majors were more likely to endorse traditional plans to combine work and family than gender-neutral majors, and had relatively lower levels of vocational aspiration and career commitment. Results also indicated no differences in level of congruence (Holland, 1992) across college majors, and that women in traditional majors who are congruent are more likely to endorse traditional orientation to combining work and family than noncongruent traditional college majors. Results indicate the need to incorporate intentions to balance work and family into career decisions for women.