This study examined personality and vocational interests in creative adolescents from racial and ethnic minority groups in the Midwest, identified with a profiling method developed based oncharacteristics that eminent creative individuals presented inadolescence. Participants included 97 students from different racial and ethnic minority groups,…

Providing career preparation for our students continues to be a focus for faculty, departments, and institutions. Professional development is most effective when accessible to students in a number of ways. This article presents how career preparation can be incorporated in advising, through programming and assessment in a career center, and in the…

The IT industry struggles to attract qualified talent despite an exceptional outlook in terms of both job availability and compensation. Similarly, post-secondary academic institutions report difficulties recruiting students for IT majors. One potential reason for this is that current career counseling practices do not adequately convey relevant…

In this investigation, a sample of counselors-in-training's (CITs) work values, occupational engagement, and professional quality of life were explored at pre- and post-completion of a career counseling course. In relation to work values, participants highly valued balance, support, helping, and honesty within their careers, while power,…

National Career Development Association (NCDA) is excited to release the re-imagined 7th edition of their influential guide to career assessment. Re-conceptualized and renamed to "A Comprehensive Guide to Career Assessment," the "Guide" contains important information career counselors, educators, and practitioners will find…

Context: Following the social cognitive career theory of Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994), the current study examines the effect of role models' professions and practical internship experiences on the choice of professional environment independent of professional interests. Embedded in the Swiss context with its strong vocational training system,…

We present the PreferenSort, a career counseling instrument that derives counselees' vocational interests from their preferences among occupational titles. The PreferenSort allows for a holistic decision process, while taking into account the full complexity of occupations and encouraging deliberation about one's preferences and acceptable…

Interest inventories and career assessments continue to be used to support practitioners as they work to uncover client interests, abilities, skills, motivations, values, and other personal factors that help individuals self-define and construct their career. The skilled use of career inventories and assessments remains a minimum competency of…

A population of people that are living longer and working longer invite a reconsideration of interests and interest measurement as individuals make substantial changes in their vocational and avocational pursuits later in life. The relationship of interests to vocational hope and childhood exposure to work is also discussed.

Nine single-race American Indian secondary students' career development experiences were examined through a phenomenological methodology. All 9 participants were in the transition period starting in late secondary school (age 18). Data sources included individual interviews and journal analysis. The phenomenon of American Indian secondary…

In the field of career development, there is an acknowledged relationship between career assessment and career counseling. Traditional career assessment and more recent narrative approaches to career counseling are perceived as having an uneasy relationship because of their different philosophical bases. A sustainable future story for the field…

Clarification of a client's self-concept and its implementation in the world of work remains an overarching goal of career counseling. To date, counselors have largely used objective measures of interests, values, needs, and abilities in their efforts to accomplish this goal. Objective assessments alone offer decontextualized views of the self,…

We examined a longstanding assumption in vocational psychology that people-things and data-ideas are bipolar dimensions. Two minimal criteria for bipolarity were proposed and examined across 3 studies: (a) The correlation between opposite interest types should be negative; (b) after correcting for systematic responding, the correlation should be…

Transition planning officially begins between the ages of 14 and 16 for most students with an IEP. However, the process is lifelong. Job Exploration Counseling, or Career counseling/guidance includes a wide variety of activities which help students explore career options and opportunities available. Job exploring options are intended to foster…

One strategy commonly used to simplify the joint interpretation of interest and confidence inventories is the use of cutoff scores to classify individuals dichotomously as having high or low levels of confidence and interest, respectively. The present study examined the adequacy of cutoff scores currently recommended for the joint interpretation…