1. MEASURING CAREER READINESS
PRESENTATION TO RESEARCH CAFÉ, UNIVERSITY OF DERBY
MEASURING CAREER READINESS
How can we decide whether school based careers interventions are having an impact?
Tristram Hooley, Professor of Career Education, University of Derby

2. Gatsby – Good Career Guidance
A stable careers programme
Learning from career and labour market information
Addressing the needs of each pupil
Linking curriculum learning to careers
Encounters with employers and employees
Experiences of workplaces
Encounters with further and higher education
Personal guidance

3. Evaluating the pilot Changes in school practice
Changes in pupil outcomes
Career readiness
Secondary data analysis (attendance, attainment and progression)
Changes in stakeholder perceptions

4. Measuring career readiness
1. Defining the approach
Literature
Selecting a starting point
2. Item generation
Mapping items onto the Gatsby benchmarks
Mapping items onto outcome based frameworks of career education
3. Translation and contextualisation
Research group review
Subject expert review
4. Scaling
5. Cognitive testing
6. Collection of pilot data (year 1)
7. Construct development (principle components analysis) and theorisation
8. Statistical validation (comfirmatory factor analysis)
9. Validation against construct relevant tools (year 2)

5. Draft instrument Part A – Demographics
e.g. Gender?
Part B – Your experience of career education and guidance
E.g. My school has a careers programme (Agree/Disagree)
Part C – How ready are you for your career?
E.g. I can assess my strengths and weaknesses (I don’t agree, I slightly agree, I somewhat agree, I mostly agree, I completely agree or I don’t know)

6. References
Gatsby Charitable Trust. (2014). Good Career Guidance. London: Gatsby.

7. Conclusions
We have a strand of research which is seeking to examine the impacts of careers practice using a mixed-methods approach.
The construction of standardised instruments potentially offers the opportunity for more robust findings.
We have taken an iterative approach to instrument development.
We would welcome feedback on our developing approach.

8. Tristram Hooley Professor of Career Education
International Centre for Guidance Studies
University of Derby
@pigironjoe
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