Measures of Career Development and Career Choice Behaviour

Abstract

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.

Family Interaction Patterns, Career Planning Attitudes, and Vocational Identity of High School Adolescents

“…Thus, total scores may range from 20 to 100 points, with high scores indicating a curiosity about careers, a readiness to looking ahead, and attempts at making tentative plans. Internal consistencies for the CP Scale have ranged from .89 to .93 in previous studies (Graef, Wells, Hyland, & Muchinsky, 1985;Kuhlman-Harrison & Meely, 1980;Nevill & Super, 1988;Selfert, 1991;Thompson et al, 1984;Ward, 1982). Concurrent validity, correlating scores on the CP Scale to relevant external variables have been assessed in numerous studies.…”

Annual Review: Practice and Research in Career Counseling and Development, 1991

“…Westbrook and Sanford (1991) found Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) Attitude scale scores failed to correlate with appropriateness of choice criteria. Seifert's (1991) Austrian versions of the CMI and the Career Development Inventory successfully predicted a wide range of criteria. The €our-factor interpretation of Career Decision Scale (CDS) scores received some support from Martin, Sabourin, LaPlante, and Coallier (1991).…”

The Career Development Inventory in Review: Psychometric and Research Findings

“…From a large data set (1,336 high school students), Seifert (1991) obtained alphas ranging from .72 for WW to .89 for CP. He also reported alphas of .89 for the CDA composite and .80 for the CDK composite.…”

“…In a sample of 1,336 eleventh-and twelfth-grade students, Seifert (1991) investigated the predictive validity of the Austrian version of the CDI. He reported that various CDI scales best predicted five career-related criterion variables.…”