Handbook of Vocational Psychology

Theory, Research, and Practice

W. Bruce Walsh, Mark L. Savickas, Paul J. Hartung, W. Bruce Walsh, Mark L. Savickas, Paul Hartung, Paul J. Hartung, W. Bruce Walsh, Mark L. Savickas, Paul Hartung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136499999
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Management

Handbook of Vocational Psychology identifies, reports, and evaluates significant developments in vocational psychology and career counseling, and in doing so provides both professional clinicians and students with an informed understanding of both the current state and continuing progress in the field. As in previous editions, the fourth edition links theory and research with the more applied aspects of this field: four sections cover, in order, the field's history, theory, research, and practical applications. Clinicians, students, and academics at all levels of experience will find that the Handbook of Vocational Psychology, 4th ed, paints an accurate picture of the realities of work and serves as a practical reference work for anyone interested in keeping up to date with the latest research and trends in vocational psychology.

Part I Theory

DOI: 10.4324/9780203143209-1

1 Advances in Theories of Career Development

Richard S. Sharf

DOI: 10.4324/9780203143209-2

In this chapter, I describe advances as well as problems that interfere with advances in career development theories. To provide a context for this approach, I first discuss the need for and importance of career development theories. Then, I examine problems in developing new theories. To understand advances in career development theories, I consider the role of the theorist and others in this process, as well as the uses of theories. This provides a perspective to examine advances in career development theories beginning with trait-and-factor approaches. Then I discuss advances in developmental models of career choice followed by constructivist and narrative approaches and more recent relational and other approaches to career development. After considering social cognitive career theory, the chapter ends with concluding remarks about the future of career choice and development theories.

The Need for Career Development Theories

Globally and politically, one of the most important issues individuals must deal with is work and the lack of work. Agricultural subsistence is an option for few people. With advances in technology, individuals must specialize, whether that be mathematics, engineering, roofing, cooking, or health. To help individuals maximize their earnings and creative potential is a major contribution of those who provide career counseling, whether in schools, universities, or private practice. Globally, competition for jobs is almost universal. Training and education give individuals an advantage in finding work. Typically, more education and training leads to higher pay and greater job opportunities. Counselors who help in this process provide an invaluable service in helping people find work that is best for them. Career development and work are both complex topics. Having an understanding of work and of how people make career choices provides a system for helping people find work. Career development theories provide a way of assessing the concerns a client presents. Having a method to think about or conceptualize the client’s problems and strengths can be extremely helpful. Some career development theories, especially cognitive and behavioral theories, also suggest specific counseling techniques to use to help clients make career choices or adjust to problems at work.

Perhaps the best known system or theory is Holland’s theory of types. The counselor can use it to organize occupations as well as information about the client’s interests, abilities, values, and personality. Career development theories provide a great help to counselors in assisting them in finding work. Although this work is an essential part of psychology and of counseling, it tends to be a smaller area of study than other areas of psychology and counseling. I suspect a major reason is because there is less urgency to help people find work than to help with immediate problems such as depression or substance abuse. This may be one reason that career development theory receives less attention than other fields of psychology and counseling. But there are other reasons as well.

Limits to Career Development Theory

When Frank Parsons and others developed trait-and-factor theory over 100 years ago, they attended to interests, values, and abilities of clients. Parsons’s (1909) formal statement was new. Since then, most (but not all) career development theories have been extensions of this theory, adding significant aspects. Some theories examine types of people; other theories look at how career choices are affected by age or stage of life. After Holland developed his typological theory, his analyses of interests and abilities as well as the analyses of others have not revealed any major differences in types. After Donald Super (1957) developed a life-stage theory, there have been minor suggestions to change his theory, but no new competing life-span theories. Some theories, like Gottfredson’s (2005) theory of career development of children fit with Super’s, adding some new ideas, but do not address adult career development. Basically, the concepts used in these two theories are broad enough so that it is difficult or impossible to have a totally different typological career development theory or a totally different life stage theory. New theories that have been developed more recently are based on different ways of seeing individuals such as cognitive psychology, relational psychology, and constructivist psychology. Career development theories appear to be limited, in that it becomes more and more difficult to develop new theories. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that once a theorist is no longer working on a theory, most research on the theory becomes very limited, and in some cases stops.

In the case of career development theories, work on the theory may lose its impetus and direction when a theorist retires, discontinues work on a theory, has little interest in doing research on a theory, becomes ill for a long time, or dies. Such occurrences present several problems for continuing to do research on a theory and to change or develop it. I will point this out as I describe advances and lack of advances in several theories. A theory can be viewed as intellectual property. When the theorist either is unable to or does not want to continue work on a theory, how can one or more individuals take responsibility for it? This is a question that has not been addressed and seems not to have an answer. A career development theory is frequently developed by one or two people. To take over someone else’s theory is like taking someone else’s property. To do research on a theory that is not updated or directed by anyone can be awkward. Additionally researchers are often rewarded through academic promotions by being creative in their work. Working on someone else’s theory may not provide the rewards that some researchers want. My best answer to the dilemma of dealing with the absence of a theorist is to coordinate and collaborate with other researchers who seem to have an interest in the specific theory, and to continue efforts on the theory. Of the career development theories that I will discuss, fewer than half have theorists that are actively involved in the theory. Most of the older theories do not have any individuals responsible for them. However, some research continues to be done on many of the theories.

There are two types of research that provide support or lack of support for a theory: intentional and unintentional. Intentional research for career development theories are theories that set out to test concepts, constructs, or propositions of a theory. Almost all research on relatively new theories such as social cognitive career theory and constructivist theories is intentional. Unintentional research on a career development theory is research which relates to a theory, but the study was not designed to test any aspects of a specific theory. For example, a researcher may wish to study the relationship of abilities to interests. Such a study has value to a theory, whether or not it is designed to test a theory. In this case, such a study would provide useful information to relate to Parsons’s trait-and-factor theory.

When I describe advances in a theory, I also briefly explain the theory to make clear how research relates to that theory. Fuller descriptions of specific theories can be found in Andersen and Vandehey (2012), Sharf (2010), and Swanson and Fouad (2010). To illustrate recent advances in the theory, I describe the research conducted between 2008 and 2012 that relates to the theory. Also, if the theory has been changed or revised, I describe that revision. In some cases I describe new theories that have just been developed.

Trait-and-Factor Theory

Parsons’s (1909) trait-and-factor theory comprises three basic steps: (a) assess and understand your attitudes, abilities, interests, values, and personality; (b) learn occupational information (job description, required training, salary, and so forth) about areas that fit with your attitudes, abilities, interests, values, and personality; and (c) make decisions based on considering both a and b. Most career development theories that followed Parsons incorporate his theory in some way. His emphasis on self-assessment was in many ways the impetus for the development of ability tests and values, interests, and personality inventories. Little research has been done on the theory itself; rather, the focus has been on the development of measures of abilities, interests, personality, and values.

Research on trait-and-factor theory has continued to focus on abilities, interests, values, and personality for more than 60 years. Much of the research makes use of assessment instruments reviewed in the Eighteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook (Spies, Carlson, and Geisinger, 2010), and in Tests in Print VIII (Murphy, Geisinger, Carlson, and Spies, 2011). This research, using assessment instruments, is unintentional, as it is not designed to address the validity of the theory itself, but to present information about abilities, interests, values, or personality measures. I give examples here of research of these concepts that has been done between 2008 and 2012.

Abilities

Some studies on aptitudes and ability added to the general knowledge of assessment of these concepts. Many studies on ability tend to focus on prediction of college grades. Predicting grade point average from SAT scores showed that predictions were better for high ability students than for other students (Coyle, Snyder, Pillow, and Kochunov, 2011) Actual high school grades predicted college freshmen’s grades better than students’ self-reports (Zwick and Himelfarb, 2011). Also, academic aptitude tests predict intelligence quite well (Koenig, Frey, and Detterman, 2008) because scores on both academic aptitude tests and intelligence tests are highly correlated. When young adults with disabilities were studied, these individuals had as wide a range of abilities as individuals without disabilities (Turner, Unkefer, Cichy, Peper, and Juang, 2011).

Interests

Perhaps the most frequent area of study is interests. Examining changes of interests in women between 1976 and 2004, Bubany and Hansen (2011) found an increase in business and management interests among women. A study of American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Black/African American, and Latina/Latino high school youth found that the college major of these students was predicted by their interests (Diemer, Wang, and Smith, 2010). Often studies of interests such as these attend to gender and/or cultural issues.

Work values

Work values are less specific than interests and less predictive of occupational choice. However, work values are related to personality and interests, while still being separate from them. Work values are most similar to personal values (Leuty, 2011). In examining the influence of work values and part-time jobs on the career development of adolescents, work values were found to be more influential than part-time work (Porfeli, 2008).

Personality

One area of personality is one’s confidence or view of one’s own competence. For example, boys in grades 7 through 12 were found to have a stronger view of their own math ability than did girls in Australia, Germany, and the United States (Nagy et al., 2010). Studying an older age group, college women from underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors had lower levels of self-confidence in their academic ability than did their male peers (Farro, 2010, and Nagy et al., 2010).

Research summary

Information about assessment instruments continues to have value, not only for trait-andfactor theory, but also other theories as well. Assessment instruments can serve to define constructs used in a theory, as well as provide self-assessment information to clients. In addition to examining assessment instruments and the relationships among abilities, inter...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Stability and Change in Vocational Psychology
• Part I: Theory
• Part II: Research
• Part III: Practice
• Author index
• Subject index