The number and type of barriers that one perceives can be a limiting factor in career choice and implementation, and the construct of perceived career barriers has been increasingly recognized as an important and useful explanatory variable in research regarding career choice. This article addresses the assessment of career barriers and includes two foci. First, we describe the development and subsequent revisions of the Career Barriers Inventory (CBI; Swanson & Daniels, 1995c; Swanson & Tokar, 1991b) and summarize empirical evidence from studies using the CBI. Second, we discuss how the construct of perceived barriers relates to the recently articulated social cognitive model of career development (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) and offer some suggestions for research and practice regarding assessment of career barriers.

No abstract

This article discusses how theory may be translated into practice in assessing women's perceived career barriers. It describes a theoretical perspective that is useful in considering the construct of perceived barriers, namely, social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), and summarizes the empirical literature regarding barriers, with particular attention to practical applications of the evidence. It then discusses how counselors might assess women's perceived barriers during career counseling and possible counseling interventions to address clients' identified barriers.A major purpose of assessment in career counseling is to identify characteristics of the client that relate either to individual difference variables-abilities, interests, values-or to the career choice processcareer indecision, career maturity, self-efficacy (Betz, 1992). One such characteristic is a client's perceptions of barriers to making and implementing a career choice. Understanding the barriers that interfere with the client's career development process is important in determining whether the client has considered the full range of available career options, the effectiveness of his or her decision-making skills, and the factors that may influence the implementation of a client's career choice.The concept of career-related barriers first appeared in discussions of the factors that are unique to the career psychology of women. Barriers were postulated as a construct to explain the gap between women's abilities and their achievements or to explain the inhibition of women's career aspirations

No abstract

In this study the authors examined the effects of problem severity, amount of self‐disclosure, and self‐disclosure flexibility on willingness to seek help for a problem. The participants were 101 midwestern university students enrolled in an introductory psychology course who had not had previous counseling experience. The participants completed the Jourard Self‐Disclosure Questionnaire (SDQ), the Chelune Self‐Disclosure Situations Survey (SDSS), and responded to questions after reading a scenario depicting a personal problem of either high or low severity. The results indicated that the factors that predicted the greatest amount of variance in willingness to seek help were the interaction of problem severity with willingness to self‐disclose to a counselor, followed by problem severity; no gender differences were found. Implications for counseling and further research are discussed.