Career Decision Making

W. Bruce Walsh, Samuel H. Osipow, W. Bruce Walsh, Samuel H. Osipow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317767350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Keeping up with new developments in vocational psychology is important to both psychological practitioners and researchers. This volume is devoted to presenting and evaluating important advances in the field of career decision making, development, and maturity. More specifically, it identifies, reports, and evaluates significant contemporary developments in vocational psychology and provides both professional workers and students with an informed understanding of the progress taking place in the field. The history and theory of the assessment of career development and decison making are explored as well as advances in career planning systems. An expanded context for the study and evaluation of career development variables is also described.

1

History and Theory of the Assessment of Career Development and Decision Making

Susan D. Phillips

Nicholas J. Pazienza

State University of New York at Albany

The business of assessment—of any variety—is essentially directed toward collecting observations on some dimension of interest. The dimension of interest is often drawn from a theory or model that has been offered to explain a given phenomenon, and the various phenomena that have been selected for explanation reflect the questions that have been posed about human behavior. In the domain of vocational behavior, a variety of questions have been posed, each of which has been pursued by an array of theoretical perspectives, which, in turn, have dictated the dimensions to be observed and assessed. The focus of this chapter is on the assessment of career development and decision making, and in the review that follows, our purpose is to trace the origins of the questions that have been asked, to outline the theoretical models that have pursued those questions, and to identify the assessment devices generated by those models.

Prior to Developmental Theory

It is clear that questions related to career decisions were asked long before “career development” became an area of interest. As is evident in Zytowski’s (1967) notes on the history of vocational guidance, plans for assessment and recommendations about vocational choice were discussed as early as the time of Plato. In the more recent era, reflected in early vocational literature, there is evidence that individuals engaged in a variety of methods of searching for vocational direction, and that they relied heavily on the identification of significant individual differences. The primary questions of this period appeared to be, “What shall I do?” and “How wise is this choice?” and such questions were placed before a variety of experts, including graphologists, palmists, phrenologists, and other diviners of predetermined forces. Richards (1881), for example, pointed to the need to form a system that would identify the most fitting pursuit for a person, and recommended, among other methods, phrenological analysis.

As the vocational guidance movement gained momentum in the early 20th century, however, these methods of identifying a “good fit” were apparently sufficiently widespread to warrant criticism and warning from more prudently minded writers. Parr (1937), for example, provided an amusing account of the failure of astrological predictions about vocational choice when put to an empirical test. Further, while reinforcing the necessity of identifying one’s talents, Kitson (1929) warned against the efforts of individuals engaged in such pseudosciences. Instead, he argued, thoughtful information gathering and analysis were necessary.

The search for a “wise choice” and for a more systematic method of vocational assessment was dramatically altered when Parsons (1909) offered his famous dictum:

In a wise choice of a vocation, there are three broad factors: (1) a clear understanding of yourself, your aptitudes, abilities, interests, ambitions, resources, limitations, and their causes; (2) a knowledge of the requirements and conditions of success, advantages and disadvantages, compensation, opportunities, and prospects in different lines of work; (3) true reasoning on the relations of these two groups of facts. [p. 5]

From his social and moral guidance origins, Parsons attempted to abandon the “pseudosciences” in favor of applying the scientific method to social problems, and his classic prescription became the model for occupational decision making and assessment.

Although Parsons’s prescription was more scientific than many of the less respected methods of the time, even he made reference to inferring individual differences in mental development from observing the shape of the head. Advances in the assessment of individual differences were clearly needed. The work of Binet, Otis, and Terman in the assessment of intelligence are often cited as critical beginnings, and in the vocational domain the work at Minnesota (e.g., Patterson & Darley, 1936) stands out as the major effort in developing assessment methods that would supply the data for a logical, empirical analysis as the basis for responding to the question, “How wise is this choice?”

While methods for assessing individual differences and assisting career decision making benefitted from increasing technological and theoretical sophistication in differential psychology, this perspective on career decision making was characterized by a strongly deterministic view of individuals and by reliance on expert analysis either to divine or identify empirically the individual differences that would be critical in determining an individual’s best occupational direction. Vocational decision making was regarded as a discrete event, and limited attention was directed to antecedents and consequences of a given decision, to changes over time, or to the decision-making process. In this tradition (still in evidence today in the models of Holland, 1973, 1985; and Dawis & Lofquist, 1984), there has been clearly more emphasis on the content and outcome of a decision—on the question of what to choose—than on the process by which the decision is made, and, consequently, the focus of the assessment efforts has been on the nature of the decider and his or her alternatives, with the goal of achieving a maximally congruent match between person and occupation.

Career Developmental Theory and Assessment

Emergence of Vocational Development as a Concept

While the initial systematic efforts associated with the problem of vocational decision making and choice were primarily those of identifying individual and occupational differences, a movement away from concern about the content of a choice and toward the process of choosing was evident as early as 1919. In the years prior to Super’s (1953) introduction of “vocational development” as a concept, several trends in the psychological and sociological literature can be identified as influential in introducing questions related to time, evolution, and change into conceptions of vocational behavior.

The first of these was in the vocational domain, where increased attention was being directed to the antecedents and consequences of decisions. Brewer (1919) offered an expansion of Parsonian notions into the educational system, arguing against choice as a point-in-time phenomenon, and for an emphasis on vocational preparation, choice, entry, and adjustment. Similarly, Kitson (1925, 1938) argued that choices are not just the unfolding of a preordained future, but rather are actively shaped by the decider. By 1929, Kitson was already warning against the misconceptions underlying the attempt to “find out what I am cut out for,” and he made a strong case for the adaptability of individuals in terms of their suitability for a number of occupations and their capacity for developing new interests and abilities as a function of their life experiences.

A second precursor to notions of vocational development emerged in both the sociological and the psychological literature in the study of life histories. In the sociological domain, attempts were being made to analyze changes in work status over time. For example, Davidson and Anderson (1937) studied occupational mobility in social and economic terms, tracing careers from parental occupation through the child’s schooling, initial workforce entry, and eventual adult occupation. Hollingshead (1949) studied the social status determinants of opportunities and progress in both educational and occupational endeavors. Additionally, Miller and Form (1951) offered an analysis of career patterns: the sequence of work periods and the succession of jobs held by individuals over the course of several years.

The study of life histories in the psychological literature yielded a picture of the normal problems and evolution of an individual over time. Beuhler’s (1933) classic analysis of life histories revealed that distinct types of problems emerged as predominant at different ages. Such authors as Terman (1925), White (1954), and Erikson (1950) also provided a view of the individual as subject to predictable developmental changes, and Lazarsfeld’s (1931) study of the determinants of choice suggested that it was possible to examine the history of a process of choosing.

While advances in the vocational domain and in sociological and psychological study of life histories both offered a view of the effects of age and time on an individual’s behavior, and on predictable changes over time, a third influential trend stemmed from changes in the assumptions underlying applied psychology. Aubrey (1977) noted that a major factor in the evolution of guidance and counseling activities during the 1940s was the issue of freedom and self-determination. Rogers’s (1942) classic work, in particular, illustrated the trend away from structural analysis and predetermination and toward self-awareness, acceptance, and growth.

In sum, the trends leading to developmental conceptualizations of career behavior, derived from a variety of domains, suggested that individuals change over time, often in predictable ways, and that visions of a preordained future could be challenged by the recognition that self-determination and participation in constructing one’s future were possible, and, perhaps, necessary. Given these observations, new questions about career decisions—“How does a career progress?” and “What happens prior to and following an implemented vocational choice?”—were warranted.

Formulations of Vocational Development

The first formally presented model of vocational development was that of Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad, and Herma (1951). Observing that occupational choice actually appeared to be a series of decisions, they sought to address the question “How do individuals make decisions about their occupations?” Drawing on Lazarsfeld’s (1931) suggestion that it was possible to examine how the person came to make the series of decisions that led to a particular choice, Ginzberg et al. identified the progressive development of factors involved in vocational choices. The product of their efforts was the delineation of three predictable stages: The fantasy stage, in which the process of choosing is conducted without attention to rational considerations; the tentative stage, characterized by advances in self-knowledge, time perspective, and reality orientation; and the realistic stage, in which both subjective considerations and a greater awareness of external reality serve as the basis for choice.

Although Ginzberg et al. provided a clearly articulated view of expectable developmental changes in vocational decision making, their view prompted quick response—and the emergence of the most widely known career development model. Super (1953) criticized the Ginzberg model for its failure to build on previous literature, for its focus on preferences rather than actual choice, for its arbitrary distinction between choice and adjustment, and for its failure to articulate the nature of the process of compromise between self and reality.

In proposing a more adequate alternative, Super (1953) detailed a continuous process of development characterized by a lifelong succession of stages. This process, he asserted, was one of developing and implementing a self-concept, and of compromise through role play between self-concept and reality. Observing that vocational psychologists had relied more heavily on the contributions of differential psychology than on those of developmental psychology, Super (1957) argued that the term “occupational choice” conveyed a misleading sense of precision and uniqueness. While individual and occupational differences were important, an array of occupations might be suitable for a given person, and there was enough intra-occupational variability to tolerate a variety of individuals.

Further, choosing an occupation was clearly not a point-in-time phenomenon. Rather, it was a process, a whole sequence of choices that evolved over time. Vocational development was seen to be an orderly, ongoing process that was marked by an evolving interchange between developmental tasks and individual repertoires (Super, Crites, Hummel, Moser, Overstreet, & Warnath, 1957). Similarly, “occupational adjustment” was not that which occurred after choice, but rather was the set of consequences associated with how developmental problems were addressed. In articulating his theory, Super (1953) deliberately selected the term “vocational development” because it encompassed the concepts of preference, choice, entry, and adjustment. “Vocational development” was used “to denote the process of growth and learning that underlies the sequence of vocational behavior” [Super et al., 1957, p. vii].

Drawing on the work of Beuhler (1933), Super (1953) proposed five vocational life stages that encompassed the entire life span. In these stages—growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline—characteristic undertakings and problems are described (Jordaan, 1974; Super, 1957; Super, Starishevsky, Matlin, & Jordaan, 1963). During the growth stage (birth to approximately age 14), the central activity is one of forming a picture of the self and an orientation to the world of work. Exploration (approximately ages 14 to 24) is characterized by increasing examination of self and of self-in-context. Various roles are tried out in fantasy and in reality, and provisional commitment to a particular occupational alternative is made. In the establishment stage (ages 25 to 44), effort is directed first toward any adjustment necessitated by the result of trial, and second toward gaining a permanent position within the chosen occupation and advancing within that occupation. Maintenance (ages 45–64) is characterized by a shift from seeking to improve one’s position to preserving that status which has been achieved. Finally, in the decline stage (age 65 and on), the individual is concerned with gradual disengagement from former work activities, and with seeking new roles to replace those formerly available in work.

As evident in the forgoing description, the life stages present predictable vocational developmental tasks. The tasks of one stage differ from the tasks of another, and different kinds of attitudes and behaviors are necessary to address the various developmental tasks. Thus, for example, the tasks associated with the exploration stage include crystallizing and specifying a vocational preference. In order to accomplish these tasks successfully, the individual must be aware of the need to crystallize and specify preferences, be able to use appropriate resources, and be aware of present–future relationships. In the establishment stage, however, developmental tasks include consolidation of status and advancement in an occupation, which require the individual to be aware of the need to consolidate, to acquire information about advancement, and to make and execute plans related to securing and improving one’s position in a given field of work (Super et al., 1963). Drawing on the work of Havighurst (1953), Super further argued that success in coping with the set of tasks encountered in a particular life stage was essential for coping well with the tasks of the next life stage, and that the degree of vocational adjustment experienced by an individual at any given life stage was determined by the adequacy of his or her previous task-related coping (Super et al., 1957).

Vocational and Psychosocial Development of Adults

While a majority of the predevelopmental views of vocational choice and decision making focused on youth, Super’s life-span perspective on careers served to highlight the existence of continued change, growth, and learning in adulthood.

As is evident in Super’s (1953) formulations, important elements of vocational behavior occur after initial occupational selection and implementation. In addition, while Super (1957) detailed the nature of adult stages of career development (establishment, maintenance, and decline) in the context of life-span stages, other authors have offer...