Assessment in Career Counseling

Chapter 9

Origins of assessment in career counseling can be traced back to Frank Parsons

“Test and tell” approach not reflective of current status of career assessment

Purpose is to gather information to facilitate decision making by counselor/client

Career Assessment

Interests

Abilities/skills

Values

Integrative Career Assessment programs

Assessing Individual Differences

Interest inventories often used because they can be helpful in describing general occupational interests

Counselors can also assess interests by using measures of expressed and manifest interests

Interest inventories have been found to promote career exploration and connect the client’s interests to specific occupations

Interests

Common interest inventories Strong Interest Inventory Career Assessment Inventory Self-Directed Search Other instruments

O*NET Interests Profiler Jackson Vocational Interest Survey For elementary students: Career Finder,

Judgment of Occupational Behavior-Orientation (JOB-O), What I Like to Do (WILD)

For individuals with disabilities: Wide Range Interest-Opinion Test-Second Edition

Interests

Strong Interest Inventory (Donnay et al., 2005)

One of the most widely used instruments in counseling

Compares individuals’ responses to items with response patterns of people in different occupations

Appropriate for high school students, college students, and adults

Assesses preferences in occupations, subject areas, activities, leisure activities, people and characteristics

Interests (cont.)

Assessment of abilities and skills often conducted to identify occupational possibilities in which client could be successful

Aptitude tests often used in career counseling because they are good predictors of occupational success

Important for counselors to verify aptitude assessment results with other information

Some common abilities/skills inventories Campbell Interest and Skills Survey Skills Confidence Inventory Self-estimates of Abilities (ability estimates & self-

efficacy estimates)

Abilities/Skills

Work values more highly correlated than interest with work satisfaction (Rounds, 1990)

No inventory is inclusive of all possible values Clients may value something not assessed on

instrument used Need to supplement use of values inventory with

exploration of other possible values Some common values instruments

Minnesota Importance Questionnaire O*NET Work Importance Profiler Values Scale

Values

Combine interests, abilities, and values assessments Kuder Career Planning System COPSystem Integrated Assessment and Career

Information Systems These systems include multiple assessments as

well as an integration of occupational information

DISCOVER Program SIGI3

Integrative Career Assessment Programs

Career Development Assessment and Counseling Approach (C-DAC) Integrates results from multiple career

assessments: Adult Career Concerns Inventory Career Development Inventory Strong Interest Inventory Values Scale Salience Inventory

Informal assessments/exercises Portfolio assessment

Combining Assessment Information

Career Decision Making

Career Maturity

Other career choice process measures

Career Process Measures

Career Decision Scale Provides measure of career indecision, but

does not indicate source or type of indecision

My Vocational Situation Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy

Scale Measures confidence individuals have in their

ability to make career decisions

Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire Constructed to measure theory-based

taxonomy of decision-making difficulties

Career Decision Making

Career maturity “extent to which the individual has mastered the vocational tasks, including both knowledge and attitudinal components, appropriate to his or her stage of career development” (Betz, 1988, p. 80) Measures the client’s level of readiness for mastering

career development tasks

Career Development Inventory

Adult Career Concerns Inventory

Career Maturity Inventory

Career Maturity

Career Thoughts Inventory Designed to measure dysfunctional thinking

about career decision making

Career Transitions Inventory Designed to assess clients’ perceptions of

psychological resources available as they go through career change

Other Career Choice Process Measures

Qualitative assessment is not standardized tests that yield quantitative scores and norm-based interpretation

Tends to foster more active role for the client rather than more passive interpretation of results

Emphasizes holistic study of the individual

Goldman, 1990

Qualitative Career Assessment

Qualitative career assessment is not a set of specific assessment instruments or techniques

Savickas (1993): Career assessment process focuses on stories Client and counselor act as coauthors and editors to:

(1) author coherent, continuous, and credible career story(2) identify themes and tensions within story lines and attribute meaning to those concepts(3) develop narrative or plan to learn skills needed to perform next episode in the story

Qualitative Career Assessment

Qualitative career assessments should consist of small, simple, and sequentially logical steps (McMahon et al., 2003)

Construction of narratives should elucidate socially and culturally embedded nature of career and facilitate greater understanding of relationship between individual and social context (Cohen, Duberty, & Mallon, 2004)

To use qualitative career assessment, practitioner must understand philosophical underpinnings of the approach

Qualitative Career Assessment

Technology and Internet-Based Career Assessments

Gender and Career Assessment

Ethnic and Cultural Differences in Career Assessment

Issues and Trends in Career Assessment

Assessments provided by professionals, as well as amateur and illegally-adapted instruments available online

Additional research needed to determine if Internet versions of instruments are comparable to paper-and-pencil Can be difficult to ascertain whether the instruments are

sound and methodologically strong Misinformation has potential to harm individuals

There are also concerns about privacy and confidentiality Some sites do this better than others

Technology and Internet-Based Career Assessments

Gender differences in interest inventories

Same-sex norms vs. combined norms

Use of less-structured assessment methods

Examination of internal and external barriers

Gender and Career Assessment

Cultural validity vs. Cultural specificity

Appropriate use of interest inventories

Culturally appropriate model of career assessment

Ethnic and Cultural Differences in Career Assessment

Culturally encompassing information gathering

Culturally appropriate selection of instruments

Culturally appropriate administration

Culturally appropriate interpretation of assessment data

A Culturally Appropriate Model of Career Assessment (Flores, Spanerman, & Obasi,

2003)