Assessment in Career
Counseling
Chapter 9
Assessing Individual Differences
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Interests
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Abilities/skills
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Values
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Integrative Career Assessment Programs
Interests
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Often used in career counseling because they can be helpful in
describing individual’s 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
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Some common interest inventories
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Strong Interest Inventory
Career Assessment Inventory
Self-Directed Search
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Kuder instruments
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Kuder Occupational Interest Survey
Kuder General Interest Survey
Other instruments
Interests
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(cont.)
Strong Interest Inventory (Sonnay, Morris, Schaubhut,
& Thompson, 2005)
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One of the most widely used, researched,
and respected instruments; not only in
career counseling, but also counseling in
general
Compares individuals’ responses to items
with the response patterns of people in
different occupations
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Appropriate for high school students, college
students, and adults
Abilities/Skills
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Assessment of abilities and skills are often conducted to
identify occupational possibilities in which the client could
be successful
Aptitude tests are often used in career counseling
because they are good predictors of occupational success
Important for counselors to verify aptitude assessment
results with other information (e.g., interest inventory)
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Some common abilities/skills inventories
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Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; Differential Aptitude Test
Campbell Interest and Skills Survey
Skills Confidence Inventory
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Self-estimates of abilities
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Values
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Work values are more highly correlated than interest
with work satisfaction (Rounds, 1990)
No inventory is inclusive of all possible values
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Clients may value something that is not assessed on the
instrument being used
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Counselors need to supplement the use of a values inventory
with an exploration of other possible values
Some common values instruments
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Minnesota Importance Questionnaire
O*NET Work Importance Profiler
Values Scale
Salience Inventory
Integrative Career Assessment
Programs
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These programs combine interests, abilities,
and values assessments
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Kuder Career Planning System
COPSystem
Integrated assessment and career information
systems
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These systems include multiple assessments as well as
an integration of occupational information
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DISCOVER Program
SIGI-Plus
Integrating Assessment Information
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Career Development Assessment and Counseling
Approach (C-DAC)
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Integrates the results from multiple career
assessments:
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Adult Career Concerns Inventory
Career Development Inventory
Strong Interest Inventory
Values Scale
Salience Inventory
Informal assessments/exercises
Portfolio assessment
Career Choice Process
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Career Decision-Making
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Career Maturity
Career Decision-Making
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Career Decision Scale
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My Vocational Situation
Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale
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Provides a measure of career indecision, but it does
not indicate the source or the type of indecision
Measures the confidence individuals have in their
ability to make career decisions
Career Decision-Making Difficulties
Questionnaire
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Constructed to measure a theory-based taxonomy
of decision-making difficulties
Career Maturity
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Career maturity is the “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).
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Measures the client’s level of readiness for mastering career
development tasks
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Career Development Inventory
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Adult Career Concerns Inventory
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Career Maturity Inventory
Qualitative Career Assessment
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According to Goldman (1990):
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Qualitative assessment is not standardized tests that usually
yield quantitative scores and norm-based interpretation.
Tends to foster a more active role for the client rather than
a more passive interpretation of the results provided.
Emphasizes a holistic study of the individual compared with
relying on more discrete measure of human constructs such
as interest, abilities, and personalities.
Also important to assess and examine the relational
influence in career assessment because work and
important relationships are complexly interwoven
constructs, and sometimes relational influences are
ignored (Schultheiss, 2005).
Qualitative Career Assessment
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Qualitative career assessment is not a set of specific
assessment instruments or techniques.
Savickas (1993) recommends assisting clients in
inventing a workable personal framework for their
lives that includes their work role.
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Client and counselor can act as coauthors in:
1.
2.
3.
Authoring a coherent, continuous, and credible career story
Identifying themes and tensions within the story lines and attributing
meaning to those concepts
Developing a narrative or plan to learn the skills needed to perform
the next episode in the story
Issues and Trends in Career
Assessment
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Technology and Internet-Based Career
Assessments
Gender and Career Assessment
Ethnic and Cultural Differences in
Career Assessment
Technology and Internet-Based
Career Assessments
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The Internet is not regulated
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For many Internet users it can be difficult to
ascertain whether the instrument is sound and
methodologically strong
Misinformation (e.g., interpretation) has the
potential to harm individuals
There are also concerns about privacy and
keeping results confidential
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Some sites do this better than others
Gender and Career Assessment
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Interest inventories
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Same-sex norms vs. combined norms
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Use of less-structured assessment
methods
Examination of barriers
Ethnic and Cultural Differences in
Career Assessment
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Cultural validity vs. cultural specificity
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Interest inventories
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Culturally appropriate model of career
assessment
A Culturally Appropriate Model of Career
Assessment (Flores, Spanerman, & Obasi, 2003)
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Culturally encompassing information
gathering
Culturally appropriate selection of
instruments
Culturally appropriate administration
Culturally appropriate interpretation of
assessment data