Vocational behavior, 1989–1991: Life-span career development and reciprocal interaction of work and nonwork

Assessing Perceptions of Career-Related Barriers: The Career Barriers Inventory

The number and type of barriers that one perceives can be a limiting factor in career choice and implementation, and the construct of perceived career barriers has been increasingly recognized as an important and useful explanatory variable in research regarding career choice. This article addresses the assessment of career barriers and includes two foci. First, we describe the development and subsequent revisions of the Career Barriers Inventory (CBI; Swanson & Daniels, 1995c; Swanson & Tokar, 1991b) and summarize empirical evidence from studies using the CBI. Second, we discuss how the construct of perceived barriers relates to the recently articulated social cognitive model of career development (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) and offer some suggestions for research and practice regarding assessment of career barriers.

Career Counseling and Psychotherapy: False Dichotomies and Recommended Remedies

This paper addresses counseling psychology's ongoing concerns about the role of career counseling. First, a series of artificial distinctions exacerbating the rift between career and personal counseling are discussed. Of particular concern is the failure on the part of counselors, possibly associated with declining interest in the career realm, to properly assess and treat career-related concerns. Arguments for the continuing importance of career development and counseling are presented in the context of the increasing acknowledgement of the work/mental health interface within applied psychology and ethical imperatives to provide needed services to our clients. Second, some possible remedies for the current state of affairs are advanced, including enhancement of the theoretical basis of career research, improving our training in career assessment and counseling, and the integration of some recent trends in psychotherapy research.

Counseling with Children

Counseling psychology and children, long thought to be mutually exclusive domains, in fact share complementary services and needs. In this article, historical and conceptual bases of counseling psychology are examined relative to their fit for work with children, from birth to 12 years of age. Attention is given to the mental health needs of today's children, and it is argued that counseling psychologists can make a legitimate contribution to the prevention and remediation of common problems that children encounter during the course of their development in a culturally diverse society.

Relational Influences in Career Development

This investigation examined the role of relationships with parents, siblings, and significant others in the career development process. Individual interviews were conducted to clarify the nature of these relationships and their association with career exploration and decision making. The narrative data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods as described by Hill, Thompson, and Williams. One of the most prominent factors in relational influence—particularly across the mother, father, and most important sibling domains—was the relationship as a multidimensional source of support. The results are discussed within the context of the core set of social support functions identified by Cutrona and Russell. Implications for theory and practice and directions for future research are offered.

The Work-Oriented Midcareer Development Model: An Extension of Super's Maintenance Stage

The work-oriented midcareer development model for middle income workers in the United States is presented to respond to changing employment dynamics. The model replaces organizationally determined internal labor markets with an individually directed career development structure. It directs workers to define their work, identify its future requirements, and select a developmental direction in an extension of Super's career maintenance stage. Three levels of midcareer development are also proposed: job oriented, work maintenance, and work growth. This new structure allows midcareer individuals to maintain or grow their employment security, income, and career satisfaction in an environment of increasing mobility and salary compression. Suggestions for applications to career counseling clients and implications for future research are discussed.

A review of research methods in IO/OB work-family research

A methodological review was conducted of work-family (WF) research published in industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior journals over a period of 24 years (1980-2003). Content analysis was conducted on 225 individual studies published in 210 articles to categorize methodological features, including the research design, sources of data used, data analysis techniques, reliability and validity of measures used, and sociodemographic characteristics of the samples. Results support many of the criticisms of WF research and suggest that scholars publishing WF research in industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior journals could make greater use of longitudinal and experimental research designs, gather more multisource data, and move beyond the individual level of analysis. Adopting more diverse conceptualizations of family, including a greater proportion of racial and ethnic minorities, and studying workers in occupations other than managerial or professional positions also appear warranted. Finally, methodological trends varied across specific WF content areas, which suggests that distinct methodologies might be useful to advance knowledge of specific WF topics.

Career satisfaction for managerial and technical anchored IS personnel in later career stages

Information system (IS) personnel have exhibit high incidence of technical and managerial anchors. It has been proposed that IS personnel with technical anchors have difficultly moving into a more advanced career stage that requires a greater emphasis on managerial skills (e.g., leadership) and activities. Using the data from a survey of IS professionals, we find that career satisfaction is positively and significantly correlated with career stage. Moreover, managerially anchored IS professionals are found to be more satisfied in the mentor stage than those who are technically anchored. However, no clear relationship between career anchors and career satisfaction was found in the sponsor stage. It appears that the combined effects of career anchor and stage is a more complex relation than previously thought in the literature. The results indicate that career programs discussed in the literature may need to be adjusted to accommodate advancement for those with a technical career anchor.