Structure and Style in Career Decision Making

Abstract

Almost from its inception Kelly's (1955) personal construct psychology has sustained a research literature directed at understanding vocational processes. This research has concentrated on the idiographic matrix of meanings, or constructs, that individuals bring to bear in making vocational decisions and wending their way through the world of work. Early work concentrated on adapting the theory's methods to eliciting personally meaningful vocational constructs, and using them in directed processes of exploration tailored to the individual's unique world view (Dolliver, 1966). Regarded as bi-polar bases of distinction among relevant aspects of experience, vocational constructs (e.g., outdoor work vs. desk job; high salary vs. low salary) provide a template or channel through which vocational events are viewed. These dimensions help organize and systematize the vocational events with which an individual is confronted, lending order and meaning to the world of work. Importantly, Kelly (1955) assumed that individuals differed not only in the particular content of the constructs that they brought to bear in making vocational judgments, but also in the overall organization, or structure of that matrix of meaning he referred to as the &dquo;vocational construct system&dquo; (p. 740).Considerable work has addressed the relationship between aspects of this vocational structure and a wide variety of career variables (see at Bibliothekssystem der Universitaet

Effects of gender, construct type, occupational information, and career relevance on vocational differentiation.

“…In particular, as Bodden (1970) reasoned, if more highly differentiated "persons are able to make finer discriminations among stimulus information input... then [they] should be more likely to make appropriate vocational decisions" (p. 364). Consistent with this reasoning, the differentiation of vocational construct systems has been found to be related to more appropriate career choice (Bodden, 1970;Bodden & Klein, 1972), higher levels of occupational identity development (Neimeyer, Nevill, Probert, & Fukuyama, 1985), greater career-decision-making self-efficacy (Nevill, Neimeyer, Probert, & Fukuyama, 1986), and more rational career decision making (Kortas, Neimeyer, & Prichard, 1992). Although exceptions to these findings have been reported (see Leso & Neimeyer, 1991), the majority of published studies support the idea that better developed and more highly differentiated vocational con-struct systems are associated with more effective career exploration and decision-making strategies (see Neimeyer, 1988Neimeyer, , 1992.…”

Effects of Career Interventions on Vocational Cognitive Complexity

“…For example, vocational cognitive complexity has been found to be associated with career decidedness and career exploratory behavior (Neimeyer, Nevill, Probert, & Fukuyama, 1985), interest crystallization (Winer & Gati, 1986), appropriate vocational choices (Bodden, 1970;Bodden & Klein, 1972), rational career decision making (Kortas, Neimeyer, & Prichard, 1992), and career decision-making efficacy (Nevill, Neimeyer, Probert, & Fukuyama, 1986). However, little effort has been devoted to investigating the effects of career interventions on vocational cognitive complexity.…”

Using Occupational Information to Increase Vocational Differentiation

“…Given the longstanding assumption that such increases are related to more effective vocational decision making (e.g., Bodden, 1970;Bodden & Klein, 1972;Kortas, Neimeyer, & Prichard, 1992), this demonstration has important practical implications in the context of career counseling. Likewise, discrepant information, information that disconfirms prior expectations, increases vocational differentiation, regardless of the valence of the information.…”