1. Assessment in Career Counseling
Chapter 9

2. Career Assessment
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

3. Assessing Individual Differences
Interests
Abilities/skills
Values
Integrative Career Assessment programs

4. Interests
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

5. 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

6. Interests (cont.) 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

7. Abilities/Skills
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)

8. Values
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

9. Integrative Career Assessment Programs
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

10. Combining Assessment Information
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

11. Career Process Measures
Career Decision Making
Career Maturity
Other career choice process measures

12. Career Decision Making
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

13. Career Maturity
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

14. Other Career Choice Process Measures
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

15. Qualitative Career Assessment
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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Issues and Trends in Career Assessment
Technology and Internet-Based Career Assessments
Gender and Career Assessment
Ethnic and Cultural Differences in Career Assessment

19. Technology and Internet-Based Career Assessments
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

20. Gender and Career Assessment
Gender differences in interest inventories
Same-sex norms vs. combined norms
Use of less-structured assessment methods
Examination of internal and external barriers

21. Ethnic and Cultural Differences in Career Assessment
Cultural validity vs. Cultural specificity
Appropriate use of interest inventories
Culturally appropriate model of career assessment

22. A Culturally Appropriate Model of Career Assessment (Flores, Spanerman, & Obasi, 2003)
Culturally encompassing information gathering
Culturally appropriate selection of instruments
Culturally appropriate administration
Culturally appropriate interpretation of assessment data