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CHAPTER 18

Counseling for Career Choice:

Implications for Improving

Interventions and Working

with Diverse Populations

Matthew J. Miller and Steven D. Brown

LMOST ALL PERSONS

in the modern world arrive at a point when they must

make (and sometimes remake) decisions about work. For some, this

choice comes freely, naturally, and easily. However, for others, the choice-

making process is much more constrained and difficult, often seeming as though

there is no choice at all. Although a variety of factors may create problems in the

choice-making process and limit an individual’s ability to find satisfying work, a

substantial body of research has accumulated since at least the early 1950s that

provides important insights, guidelines, and prescriptions for working with peo-

ple experiencing difficulties in deciding on the type of work that they want to

pursue. One purpose of this chapter is to summarize this research and draw some

specific suggestions for counselors working with such persons.

Despite the cumulative wisdom that has been generated through some 50

years of research on career counseling process and outcome, there are still seri-

ous gaps in our knowledge base. Foremost among these has been the tendency of

researchers to treat all clients in studies of career interventions as if they are

alike—as if the reasons for their indecision are similar and their goals for coun-

seling identical. A second purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide some

suggestions, based on our counseling experiences and the writings of others,

about how career counseling might be differentially tailored to meet the needs of

the widest array of clients.

Much has also been written about the unique issues and potentially career-

limiting experiences that persons bring with them to counseling on the basis of

their gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation that need to be attended to

by counselors to effectively facilitate the choice making of diverse clientele. Al-

though, as

we later discuss, this writing has yet to be incorporated fully into

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research on ca

reer interventions, it is a literature that counselors must know so

they can provide effective career service in today’s diverse society. Thus, a third

purpose of this chapter is to highlight important implications for choice-focused

counseling that are derivable from research and theory on gender, race/ethnicity,

and sexual orientation and the career development process.

We also have a fourth purpose in this chapter—to highlight within each sec-

tion important questions that still need research attention. In the end, therefore,

we hope that the chapter serves not only as a practical guidebook for those pro-

viding, or preparing to provide, career choice counseling services, but also as a

road map for those who want now, or in the future, to contribute to the research

literature in the field in a way that not only advances knowledge but also fosters

greater equality, justice, success, and happiness for all people—even for those

who may feel now that their lives provide them with no choices at all.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT

COUNSELING FOR CAREER CHOICE?

This section will discuss the effectiveness of career choice interventions and

highlight how they might be improved. Suggestions for improvement will include

ensuring that interventions are based more fully on empirically supported theo-

ries and that they are designed to take into account the unique goals and circum-

stances that clients bring with them to counseling.

FFECTIVE

AREER

HOICE

NTERVENTIONS

Most of the suggestions and guidelines that we provide in this section are derived

from meta-analyses of the career intervention outcome literature. Meta-analysis

is a systematic statistical approach to synthesizing the results of numerous stud-

ies to arrive at empirically derived conclusions from a body of literature. The pri-

mary difference between meta-analysis and other approaches to research is that

data are pooled across studies rather than individuals and then analyzed to ad-

dress important research questions that might not have even been addressed in

the primary studies that went into the meta-analysis itself. In relation to the ca-

reer intervention outcome literature, some of the most important questions that

have been addressed are:

•How effective are career interventions for choice-making difficulties?

•Does intervention effectiveness vary as a function of client characteristics

(e.g., Are interventions more effective for men than for women?)?

•Does intervention effectiveness vary as a function of intervention character-

istics (e.g., Are more sessions better than fewer sessions? Is individual coun-

seling better than group counseling?)?

•Does intervention effectiveness vary as a function of counseling strategies

or techniques (e.g., Is counseling outcome improved if interest inventories

are given?)?

The first question is usually addressed by calculating across all studies an av-

erage estimate of the magnitude of effect of the intervention (called an effect size

or effect size estimate). The other questions are typically addressed by compar-

ing effect sizes. For example, to address the question of whether individual

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Counseling for Career Choice: Implications for Improving Interventions 443

interventions are better than group interventions, the average effect size for

studies that employed individual counseling interventions can be compared to

the average effect size of studies that tested group interventions. Alternatively,

when possible (see Whiston, Brecheisen, & Stephens, 2003), effect sizes can be

calculated directly from studies that compared one form of intervention (e.g.,

individual) to another (e.g., group).

Although there are a variety of effect size estimates, the one that is most fre-

quently employed in meta-analyses of career interventions is the standardized

mean difference (usually symbolized as d). This effect size is interpreted as the

difference, in standard deviations, between treatment and control or comparison

group outcomes. Thus, for example, a d of 1.00 means that the average person in

one group improved a standard deviation more than the average person in the

other group on the relevant outcome. If the comparison was between individual

and group interventions and the outcome was level of decidedness, a d of this

magnitude would suggest that clients who received individual counseling be-

came, on the average, one standard deviation more decided about their career di-

rections than clients who received group counseling. If the comparison was

between receiving any type of career choice intervention and no treatment, a d of

1.00 would suggest that the average counseled client became one standard devia-

tion more decided than the average uncounseled person. A d of 0.00 would mean

that the outcomes of the interventions being compared were essentially the same

(the average person in one group improved no standard deviations more than the

average person in the other group), while a negative d value would suggest an ef-

fect in the opposite direction (e.g., untreated persons improved more than coun-

seled clients). The larger the value of d, the larger the differences between

conditions and, therefore, the more potent the treatment effect.

The findings across four major meta-analyses of the career intervention out-

come literature published between 1983 and 2000 suggest that career interven-

tions in general are effective (S. D. Brown & Ryan Krane, 2000; Oliver & Spokane,

1988; Spokane & Oliver, 1983; Whitson, Sexton, & Lasoff, 1998), and those de-

signed specifically for clients with choice-making difficulties yield an average

overall effect size (d) of about 0.34 (S. D. Brown & Ryan Krane, 2000). Thus, it ap-

pears that the average client who receives help in the career choice-making pro-

cess is, at the end of the intervention, about a third of a standard deviation more

decided, satisfied, certain, and mature about his or her choices and efficacious

about his or her decision-making skills than persons who received no career

help. Although guidelines established to interpret effect sizes in the social sci-

ences (Cohen, 1988) would suggest that this effect is modest (i.e., ds of 0.30, 0.50.,

and 0.70 are considered to be small, medium, and large, respectively), the meta-

analyses have also yielded some important suggestions about how intervention

effectiveness might be enhanced. It is to these suggestions that we turn next

after briefly summarizing the focus and content of “typical” career choice inter-

ventions (see also S. D. Brown & McPartland, in press, for a discussion of how ef-

fect sizes of even this seemingly modest magnitude translate into socially and

practically meaningful effects).

AREER

HOICE

NTERVENTIONS

MPROVED

Although career choice interventions that have been tested in the research litera-

ture are varied (e.g., they range from single, one-hour test interpretation ses

sions

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444 C

AREER

NTERVENTIONS ACROSS THE

IFE

PAN

to semester-long career classes; are sometimes wholly self-directed or involve

interactions with a computerized career guidance system with varying levels of

counselor involvement), most seem to be built around Parsons’ (1909) three-

stage model of vocational guidance (diagnosis, information, and true reasoning)

and are directed largely by prominent trait-factor theories—usually Holland’s

(1997; Spokane & Cruza-Guet, Chapter 2, this volume) theory of career choice.

For example, of the 62 studies employed in the S. D. Brown and Ryan Krane

(2000) meta-analysis, nearly all assisted clients in understanding their work

personalities through standardized self-report inventories (62%), values clarifi-

cation exercises (30%), card sorts (8%), and/or a “learning about

self” module in

computer-assisted guidance systems (26%)—see Gore and Hitch (Chapter 16,

this volume) for a description of the two most widely used of these systems. The

most frequent targets for self-understanding were clients’ vocational interests

and, to a lesser extent, work and life values. Objective ability tests, on the other

hand, were never employed, and self-rated ability estimates were used to in-

crease self-understanding or generate occupational possibilities in only 30% of

the studies, most of which were via “learning about self” modules in computer

guidance systems. Thus, it appears that clients in extant research-

based career

interventions are helped systematically to learn about their vocational interests

and RIASEC codes and, although somewhat less frequently, their needs and val-

ues. They are virtually never helped to consider their abilities in a systematic

way unless they are exposed to a computer-assisted guidance system as part of

the intervention, and, even then, ability assessment is always by self-report.

In relation to Parsons’ information stage, clients were also exposed to occu-

pational information in 35% of the studies and were introduced to occupational

information sources and encouraged to use them outside of regularly sched-

uled sessions in an additional 18% of the studies. Finally, direct assistance or

instruction in decision making (true reasoning?) was provided to clients in 55%

of the studies.

Thus, it appears that extant interventions that have appeared in the research lit-

erature, although ostensibly based on a long-standing model and well-developed

theories, have not fully implemented either the model or the theories. Our first

suggestion to improve current career interventions, therefore, is to incorporate

the theories on which the interventions seem to be based more fully, especially

by focusing on constructs that are suggested by the Theory of Work Adjustment

(Dawis, Chapter 1, this volume) as intensively as interests and RIASEC personal-

ity types. Rounds (1990), for example, showed convincingly that a combination of

interest congruence and need-reinforcer correspondence did a much better job of

predicting clients’ future levels of work satisfaction than did either congruence

or correspondence alone. Thus, since one goal of most choice-based interventions

is to help clients forecast and ultimately choose occupations that will give them

satisfaction, there is both theoretical and empirical support for using both inter-

est and vocational need/value data to generate occupational possibilities for

clients—not just, as seems to be commonly the case, to engage in values clarifica-

tion exercises to facilitate self-understanding of the latter.

Further, as Achter and Lubinski have so eloquently demonstrated in Chapter

25 of this volume, ability assessment is critical to facilitating the choice-making

of the intellectually talented. We would also hypothesize that all clients, as

sug

gested by the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis, Chapter 1, this volume),

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Counseling for Career Choice: Implications for Improving Interventions 445

would benefit more fully if ability assessments, beyond self-reports, were incor-

porated into interventions. We would, in fact, go so far as to hypothesize that

such assessments might be most critical for those whose ability perceptions may

have been compromised because of the experiences that they have had growing

up poor or as a woman and/or racial-ethnic minority in today’s society, espe-

cially if accompanied by instructions that would reduce the negative influence of

stereotype threats (e.g., Steele, 1997) on ability assessment results. Our goal

should be to help people identify talents, overcome career-limiting influences,

and reach as high as their talents can take them using the best methods available

rather than to avoid such methods by assuming, without empirical evidence,

that tests of intellectual competence and abilities will necessarily limit rather

than expand possibilities.

In addition to incorporating more fully extant trait-factor theories into career

choice interventions, it may be helpful to consider how other theories might in-

form practice. For example, as summarized by S. D. Brown and McPartland (in

press), both Social Cognitive Career Theory and Gottfredson’s Theory of Circum-

scription and Compromise suggest that some people (perhaps many) may prema-

turely eliminate viable career options from consideration because of inaccurate

self-efficacy beliefs, incomplete occupational information (see Lent, Chapter 5,

this volume), or through sex role socialization and other experiences of childhood

(see Gottfredson, Chapter 4, this volume). Both theories also indicate that it is im-

portant to help people during counseling to identify and reconsider these possi-

bilities, and both theories also provide some strategies to help in this process (see

Gottfredson, Chapter 4, this volume; Lent, Chapter 5, this volume). Thus, we

would also suggest that career choice intervention effectiveness might be further

enhanced by incorporating such strategies into counseling, especially for those

whose experiences are likely to have caused them to seriously truncate their pos-

sibilities and potentials.

As another example, Savickas (2002; Chapter 3, this volume) advocates that

counselors help clients gain a fuller understanding of the personal salience of the

work role vis-à-vis other life roles (role salience), their readiness to make a career

decision (career adaptability), and the career themes that provide them with self-

definition in order to make fully informed career decisions. These suggestions, as

well as those provided by Gottfredson (Chapter 4, this volume) and Lent (Chapter

5, this volume), certainly also deserve to be tested in future career intervention

research to see if they add to career choice counseling outcome beyond what can

be obtained from fully implemented, nontruncated (Williamson, 1965; Achter &

Lubinski, Chapter 25, this volume) trait-factor-based counseling.

Finally, the meta-analytic research has also suggested some ways that career

choice counseling outcomes can be improved. S. D. Brown and Ryan Krane (2000),

for example, identified five strategies that, when employed in career choice inter-

ventions, seemed to be critically related to improved counseling outcome across

different types of clients and interventions. These five strategies, called critical

ingredients by Brown and Ryan Krane, are:

1. Having clients establish in writing goals for future career work.

2. Talking with clients individually (in group, classroom, and computer-

guided interventions) about their future written goals and difficult-to-

terpret assessment results.

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