No abstract

This study examined the clinical significance of career counseling effects. Participants were 111 university students (83% women) who participated in individual career counseling sessions at their university. All participants completed the French version of the Outcome Questionnaire–30.2 (OQ‐30.2; Lambert, Finch, Okiishi, & Burlingame, 2005) immediately before the 1st session (pretest) and at the beginning of the last session (posttest). The OQ‐30.2 assesses 3 client life domains: subjective discomfort, problems in interpersonal relationships, and problems in social role satisfaction. Using Jacobson and Truax’s (1991) statistical approach to assessing clinical change, the authors compared clients’ pretest OQ‐30.2 scores with their posttest scores. Among clients with a “dysfunctional” score (n = 59) at the study’s inception, 34% recovered and 14% improved, whereas 41% of clients with functional scores (n = 52) at the study’s inception improved. The results suggest that individual career counseling can make a difference in the lives of many clients; they also highlight the importance of further outcome research that accounts for possible variability in clients’ responses to career counseling.

The aim of the present study was 2-fold: (a) to examine the factor structure of the short version of the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI-S) in clients who were engaged in individual career counseling sessions and (b) to investigate whether the factor structure of the WAI-S is invariant across the first and the third career counseling sessions. A total of 283 clients seeking individual career counseling completed the WAI-S at the end of the first session (T1). Of the 283 clients, 217 also completed the WAI-S at the end of the third session (T2). Confirmatory factor analyses were performed to assess the fit of one-factor, two-factor, three-factor, and bilevel hierarchical models. The results showed that the three-factor and the bilevel hierarchical models had the best fit to the data at both T1 and T2. The factor structure of the WAI-S was invariant across the first and the third career counseling sessions. Results suggest that researchers and clinicians can use the WAI-S knowing that it adequately measures Bordin’s theoretical model of working alliance in the specific context of individual career counseling.

This article reports on the results of the first meta-analysis of the association between working alliance and outcomes of individual career counseling. This random-effects meta-analysis included 18 published and unpublished studies that produced a weighted mean effect size of r = .42. This effect size was heterogeneous across studies. Separate meta-analyses were conducted for several types of outcomes: Career outcomes, mental health outcomes, and client-perceived quality of the intervention. Average effect sizes for the association between working alliance and types of outcomes were .28, .18 and .62, respectively. Moderator analyses indicated that the overall mean effect size ( r =.42) varied in a large proportion as a function of the type of outcomes and the time of assessment of working alliance (first session, mid or at termination of the counseling service). Our results confirm that working alliance is associated to career counseling effectiveness and suggest that career counselors should emphasize on the working alliance during the career counseling process. In conclusion, this article provides suggestions for practice in individual career counseling and avenues of research on working alliance in this context.

No abstract