| Though career counseling outpaces psychotherapy in effecting gains (Hackett, 1993), positively influences career-related self-awareness and knowledge (Whiston, Sexton, & Lasoff, 1998), and yields high overall client satisfaction rates (Mau & Fernandes, 2001), a more sophisticated understanding of its mechanisms for success and differential effectiveness is needed. The purpose of this dissertation was to build upon Brown and Ryan Krane's (2000) research about critical ingredients that contribute to career counseling's strong outcomes by testing the power of an intervention that combined three components---individualized attention, a writing exercise, and a support-building activity---versus an intervention that included one ingredient---individualized attention---to influence session satisfaction, career indecision, vocational identity, and consideration of occupations, with an expectation that effectiveness would differ depending upon participants' presenting problems (e.g., need for career choice expansion or confirmation). Women were the planned focus of the investigation because of their overrepresentation within career counseling clientele (Goodman & Savage, 1999) and their need for an expanded occupational scope in light of their tendency to prematurely narrow options, oftentimes eliminating higher paying and/or status positions (Betz, 1994, 2005; Gottfredson, 1981, 2002, 2005). However, because of comparable responses and increased statistical power, men and women were included in the sample.;The participants (N = 168) were university students who took the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) through a vocational planning course or the campus career center. They attended an SII interpretation session and were randomly assigned to complete: (a) an experimental writing intervention followed by a series of posttest measures, or (b) a control set of surveys that included the posttest measures. Although the results did not reveal significant differences between the treatment conditions in terms of session satisfaction, career decidedness, vocational identity, or number/breadth of occupations considered, they did provide partial support for the differential effectiveness of the treatment-plus condition by problem type. After completing the writing intervention, individuals who sought career choice confirmation considered fewer Conventional occupations, experienced lower indecision, and had higher vocational identity levels than those who required career choice expansion. Based on these findings, implications for theory and practice, limitations, and future research directions are discussed. |
