The authors investigated the influence of a 9-week career education class on career decision-making self-efficacy, vocational skills self-efficacy, perceived educational barriers, outcome expectations, educational plans, and career expectations among a sample of 166 high school sophomores. Using a nonrandomized, within-subjects crossover design, the authors collected pretest, posttest, and follow-up data with a health education class as the control condition. Post-and follow-up testing suggest that the class resulted in increased career decision-making self-efficacy, vocational skills self-efficacy, and short-term gains in outcome expectations but did not influence perceived educational barriers. Participants enrolled in the career education class in the first quarter were more likely to change career plans than were those in the control condition. Implications for practice and future research are presented.The School to Work Opportunities Act (1994) was designed to help young people make the transition from school to careers and lifelong learning. This piece of federal legislation as well as others (Goals 2000: Educate America Act; the Carl Perkins Vocational and Applied Technological Education Act of 1990) have increased attention and dollars allocated to this critical transition from formal educational systems into careers or full-time employment. Interest in the school-to-work transition emerges, at least in part, from findings that the U.S. workforce lacks the skills required to meet the current high-tech needs of the contemporary labor market (e.g., Commission on Skills of the American Workforce, 1990), that the United States lags behind other first-world nations in preparing students to make successful posteducation transitions into careers (e.g., U.S. General Accounting Office, 1990; William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family, and Citizenship, 1988a, 1988b), and that a significant proportion of youth aged 16 to 24 lack entry-level employment skills (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1993). The School to Work Opportunities Act and other initiatives are designed to help kindergarten through 12th-grade students obtain the experience, knowledge, and skills required to explore the world of work, develop employment skills, make decisions, and to identify, pursue, and attain vocational goals.

In this article, we overview the literature on women's career barriers and identify potential external, environmental barriers and individual, socialized barriers to women's career adjustment. We describe a variety of assessment strategies and instruments that may be utilized to assess barriers to women's career adjustment. A case example is provided to illustrate the assessment process.

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