Evaluation of a Semi-Structured Career Assessment Interview Derived from Systems Theory Framework

Abstract

Current literature indicates that vocational assessment in the field of career counselling and guidance has been dominated by quantitative and empirical methods. Recent criticism of the field from the post-modernist perspective has stimulated the development of theories that account for the presence of a wider range of influences in an individual's phenomenal world with respect to career. This study investigated the practical efficacy of a semi-structured interview (derived from the Systems Theory Framework (STF)) which was developed for application in the career counselling service at a university. Another interview derived from ‘standard’ practice methods was also developed for comparison purposes. Clients of the careers counselling service received either form of interview in an experiment that utilised a pre-test/post-test design. Three measures of outcome (self-exploration, environment exploration and attributional style) were used to assess the two interview methods. The results indicated that the interview based on the STF has some tentative merit as a potential alternative method for career assessment.

Narrative career counselling: Theory and exemplars of practice

“…This reflective process serves to both facilitate a client and counsellor establishing idiographic details and, moreover, to engage in the process of knitting the facts together into a career story that is truthful for the client, yet makes reasonable sense according to the characteristics of a good story (cf., McAdams, 1996). This is best exemplified by the integration of qualitative assessment procedures within the counselling process (McMahon & Patton, 2002;McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2003;Savickas, 1992;Whiston & Rahardja, 2005) such as semi-structured interviews that flow with the counselling dialogue (e.g., McIlveen, McGregor-Bayne, Alcock, & Hjertum, 2003;Schultheiss, 2005).…”

“…Furthermore, a set of criteria for the rigorous development and evaluation of constructivist, qualitative assessment procedures for vocational assessment and counselling (McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2003) enable research into the narrative approach. Finally, there are cases of emerging quasiexperimental evidence (e.g., McIlveen, Ford, & Dun, 2005;McIlveen, McGregor-Bayne, Alcock, & Hjertum, 2003) and rigorous qualitative validation studies (e.g., which support the narrative approach. More research is required however.…”

“…Spoken techniques include career counselling for Life Themes (Savickas, 2005), Sociodynamic Counselling (Peavy, 2000), the Storied Approach (Brott, 2001), the Thematic Extrapolation Method (Super, 1957), the Career Style Interview (Savickas, 1989b(Savickas, , 2005, the Life/Work Design approach (Campbell & Ungar, 2004), the Career Systems Interview (McIlveen, McGregor-Bayne, Alcock, & Hjertum, 2003) and Working With Storytellers (McMahon, 2006). Written exercises, such as autobiographies (Cochran, 1997), add to the depth of the counselling dialogue and provide clients with a different modality of expression.…”

“…The Career Systems Interview (McIlveen, McGregor-Bayne, Alcock, & Hjertum, 2003) is based upon the STF. It has been compared with other semi-structured interviews which take an holistic view of career (Schultheiss, 2005) and apply the STF (McMahon & Watson, 2006).…”

The Systems Theory Framework of Career Development

“…Specifically, the school system encourages and enables practitioners to map stakeholders and contextualize their career education programs. Systems Interview (CSI;McIlveen, 2003;McIlveen, McGregor-Bayne, Alcock, & Hjertum, 2003) is a semistructured interview process theoretically grounded in the STF. Clients are initially familiarized with the holistic STF diagram (see Figure 1) to establish rapport and background for the CSI.…”