The efficacy of a three-week career construction counselling group intervention that was structured using the My Career Story workbook [Savickas, M. L., & Hartung, P. J. (2012). My career story: An autobiographical workbook for life-career success. www.vocopher.com] was examined using a pre/post-test design. The group intervention was…

Emotion permeates human life, yet receives little attention in career theory and intervention. Long seen as a barrier to avoid, recent conceptual and empirical work indicate that emotion benefits human behavior and development. Advances in the interdisciplinary science of emotion support examining the construct across differential, developmental,…

A review of the 2009 career counseling and development literature indicates that the field remains vital, vibrant, valid, and viable precisely 100 years after its founding. Using the field's 4 fundamental traditions of person-environment fit, life-span development, social cognition, and constructivism-social constructionism as lenses for…

Childhood marks the dawn of vocational development, involving developmental tasks, transitions, and change. Children must acquire the rudiments of career adaptability to envision a future, make educational and vocational decisions, explore self and occupations, and problem solve. The authors situate child vocational development within human life…

Experienced happiness and reported life contentment represent cardinal elements of subjective well-being (SWB). Achieving happiness and contentment with work and other domains, such as love, play, and community, constitute fundamental life goals. Career construction offers a developmental theory of vocational behavior and a career assessment and…

Five proposals are made for incorporating a work-play perspective in career development research: (1) fuse work and play conceptually over the life course; (2) imbue developmental career theory with a work-play fusion; (3) study work and play across the life span; (4) investigate work and play within the life space; and (5) consider a work-play…

Theory and research suggest that children develop orientations toward work appreciably influenced by their family members' own expressed work experiences and emotions. Cross-sectional data from 100 children (53 girls, 47 boys; mean age = 11.1 years) and structural equation modeling were used to assess measures of work affectivity and experiences…

Childhood marks the dawn of human development. To organize, integrate, and advance knowledge about vocational development during this age period from a life-span perspective, we conducted a comprehensive review of the empirical vocational development literature that addresses early-to-late childhood. The review considers career exploration, career…

Cluster analysis of Adult Career Concerns Inventory scores for 87 adults revealed three exploratory patterns: maintaining current occupation, transitioning to new occupation, or innovating and moving ahead in current position. Developmental career counseling should incorporate sensitivity to individual concerns related to personality types…

Vocational development research and interventions have focused primarily on adolescents and young adults. The lack of attention to career development antecedents in children has led to a serious neglect of this period of life when the foundation is laid for career choices and outcomes in later life. A harmful by-product is the frequent preclusion…

Data on measures of family interaction, role salience, and vocational identify from 107 female and 65 male students revealed significant links between family emotional closeness and structural flexibility and higher participation in and commitment to home and family roles. Levels of work-role salience and vocational identity were not significantly…

A literature review on the Career Development Inventory since 1979 found support for its sensitivity and specificity as a measure of readiness to make educational and vocational choices. Research is needed on its predictive validity. Revision should address increasing the reliability of the two cognitive scales. (63 references) (SK)

Reviews literature on (1) cultural validity of career assessment instruments with racial and ethnic minorities; (2) extent to which culture-specific variables influence career assessment; and (3) construction and validation of culture-specific measures. Finds more research on cultural validity than specificity and notes the need for more study of…

High school students (n=64) completed the Career Development Inventory (CDI), Vocational Preference Inventory, and Salience Inventory after freshmen and sophomore years. Girls scored higher than boys on the CDI. Increases in CDI scores with grade level were not supported. Significant correlations among scale scores on the instruments supported a…

Career counselors use occupations information to help clients make informed vocational decisions. A literature review of career information reveals a significant lack of study of the visual content of career information materials. By taking account of visual images in career information resources, counselors can help clients explore imagined…