Dans la première partie de l'article, le statut actuel et les problèmes de mesure du développement professionnel sont passés en revue, en particulier la recherche et la difficulté de construction d'échelles valides, et une réflexion sur la structure dimensionnelle et la nature conceptuelle de la maturité vocationnelle. La seconde partie présente les résultats d'une étude, conduite auprès d'étudiants de high school autrichienne, des grades 11 et 12, dans le but de rechercher les liens entre les indices de maturité vocationnelle et les comportements du choix de la profession. Les résultats montrent que cinq des neuf mesures de maturité vocationnelle corrèlent comme prévu, fortement, avec toutes ou presque les variables‐critères, les meilleures étant le souci concernant le choix de carrière, l'appropriation, auto‐évaluée de la préférence (ou certitude) de réalisation, la dimension de la considération pour la carriere préférée, les aspects de la motivation du choix professionnel et l'esprit de décision concernant une carrière ou son dépassement. In the first part of this paper, the current status and the problems of career development measurement are reviewed. In particular, the findings and problems of constructing reliable scales and the issues of the dimensional structure and the conceptual nature of career maturity are discussed. The second part presents the results of a study, conducted with Austrian high school students of grade 11 and 12, which was aimed at investigating the relationships of career maturity measures to vocational choice behaviour. The findings show that five out of nine career maturity measures correlate substantially, as expected, with almost all or at least some criterion variables. Career choice concerns, self‐assessed appropriateness of preference/certainty of realisation, length of time considering the preferred career option, aspects of vocational choice motivation, and decidedness for a career or major, all appeared as best predicted criteria.

In the first part of the article, the major findings and the problems of criterion‐related validity research in the field of career development assessment are analyzed. Regarding predictive validity, it is shown that it is more difficult to prove mediumterm and long‐term effects of career maturity on career adjustment than short‐term effects, and that this is connected with shortcomings in research and theory. In the second part of the article, empirical evidence is provided for the assumption that self‐concept orientation in choice of present major and realization of preferences might function as mediating factors between career development in school and career adjustment.

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