The PreferenSort

Abstract

We present the PreferenSort, a career counseling instrument that derives counselees’ vocational interests from their preferences among occupational titles. The PreferenSort allows for a holistic decision process, while taking into account the full complexity of occupations and encouraging deliberation about one’s preferences and acceptable trade-offs. We describe three validation tests: (a) comparing the vocational interests derived by the PreferenSort to those accumulated using Holland’s Self-Directed Search (construct validity); (b) exploring the relations between the participants’ derived interests and their field of study (concurrent validity); and (c) the degree of improvement in the prediction of the participants’ field of study in the derived over the accumulated vocational interests (incremental validity). As hypothesized, by allowing for a holistic decision process, the PreferenSort explains the vocational interests of intuitive individuals better. These findings provide evidence that the PreferenSort is important as a supplementary counseling tool for individuals with an intuitive decision style—people who currently lack self-help counseling instruments.

Counseling for Career Decision‐Making Difficulties: Measures and Methods

“…It is important for career counselors to become familiar with their clients' typical decision-making behavior so they can tailor the counseling process to the unique way each of their clients makes career decisions. Indeed, studies have shown that individuals with different approaches to career decision making tend to respond best to counseling that is tailored to their particular style (e.g., Amit & Gati, 2013;Amit & Sagiv, 2013;Mau, 1995;Tinsley, Tinsley, & Rushing, 2002;Zakay & Tsal, 1993).…”