The Opportunity Structure: Implications for Career Counseling

Traditional career counseling methods are based on the assumption that matching clients' interests, values, abilities, and aptitudes to a suitable occupation will result in opportunities for self-actualization and personal expression. However, vocational psychology tends to neglect a critical extra-individual factor: the nature of the opportunity structure. True career choice may be the experience of only a small proportion of clients. Vocational psychology has focused almost exclusively on individuals to the neglect of social, economic, and political realities.     

Development of a Career Stress Scale for Hospital Nurses: Implications for Workplace Counseling

The author performed 3 studies to investigate the construct validation and applicability of a Career Stress Scale for hospital nurses. After conducting an exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 141 nurses in the 1st study, the author examined divergent and convergent validity in the 2nd study, and performed a confirmatory factor analysis to test the hypothesized model on a sample of 284 teaching hospital nurses. The final study aimed to expand the findings, and the author used multigroup structural equation modeling to examine the measurement invariance of the Career Stress Scale for a district hospital, in a sample of 166 nurses. Recommendations for future studies and workplace counseling are discussed.     

Counseling Issues for Adult Women in Career Transition

This article addresses current psychosocial issues facing women in career transition and the implications of those issues for career counselors. Specifically, psychosocial developmental trajectories, the roles of family and relationships, the importance of underlying physical and mental health issues, and sociocultural and contextual stressors are relevant for women in the midst of career change. The author discusses how career counselors can prepare for this complexity and addresses clients' current economic and social milieus. A checklist is provided to aid the career counselor in addressing the multiple issues that a new client brings to the 1st counseling encounter.     

Counseling Rejected Applicants: Feedback for Career Development

In this article the author points out the need for more adequate counseling with an often neglected segment of the population: rejected applicants to higher education. He delineates the roles, functions, and problems of the counselor in this situation, using as an example current procedures for counseling rejected applicants in the Yale Physician's Associate Program. The article contains recommendations for counselors, so that they might become more familiar with the problems and functions of admissions committees, and for admissions committees, so that they might enlist the aid of those with counseling training in both the admissions process and the counseling of rejected applicants.     

Consideration of Genetic Counseling as a Career: Implications for Diversifying the Genetic Counseling Field

Under-representation of racial/ethnic minority counselors has been an ongoing issue in the genetic counseling field. A better understanding of genetic counseling awareness and career consideration may help to increase the number of applicants to genetic counseling training programs from racial/ethnic minorities. This study sampled high school and college students (n = 233) to examine their awareness and perceptions of genetic counseling. Ethnicity, gender, parental level of education, and interest in biology were significant predictors of a subjects genetic counseling awareness; previous awareness of genetic counseling, interest in psychology, and level of education were significant predictors of whether a subject would consider genetic counseling as a career. The findings suggest that knowledge of genetic counseling is lower among racial/ethnic minorities, but that racial/ethnic minorities are just as likely to consider genetic counseling as a career. Awareness of genetic counseling prior to university education may increase racial/ethnic minority representation among potential applicants to genetic counseling training programs.     

A Career Developmental Perspective on the Therapeutic Alliance: Implications for Counseling

This review explores the role played by childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) in selecting a career in the field of mental health and the potential positive and deleterious effects of these career‐choice motives on the therapeutic alliance. The reviewed findings support the assumption that CEM may serve as a precursor for career choice of professions in the mental health field. Implications are suggested for the counselor/therapist–client relationship, also known as the therapeutic alliance, as well as for career counseling.     

Career Counseling Implications with the Gay and Lesbian Population

In this article, the author identifies resources available to assist the gay and lesbian population with career planning and job search concerns. Evolving legal issues are also discussed.     

The Dual Career Couple: Concerns,Benefits, and Counseling Implications

A comprehensive conceptualization of concerns and benefits experienced by dual career couples is presented. Counseling implications are provided to address the concerns. Counselors are asked to expand their roles to help couples challenge unquestioned societal values and practices and uniquely define their own standards for success in career and family roles.     

Client Conceptions of Change in Career Development and Career Counseling

This article illustrates the ways in which clients in career counseling think about the types of change in their career lives and about the determinants of change. It is based on an analysis of the interview data of a few adult clients. Two category systems are proposed as representative of the clients' thinking about change in these domains.     

Boyhood Sex-Role Development: Implications for Counseling and School Practices

Counseling boys requires an understanding of sex-role development in shaping a boy's personality because establishing gender identity is a major developmental task of boyhood. This article presents a 3-stage model of sex-role development and discusses school practices to promote sex-role development.     

Career and Educational Counseling Implications of Women's Life Experience Learning

This article summarizes the responses of 131 adult women to a questionnaire survey of their experiences and activities in homemaking, parenting, volunteer work, recreation, formal and nonformal education, and paid work. The results show that reentry women have had a wide variety of life experiences through which they have developed job-related skills. The findings also show the importance of counselor assistance in identifying nontraditional skills and in exploring how the interpersonal and managerial skills learned in unpaid work can aid women's career advancement.     

Differences in Student Perceptions of Secondary Vocational Education: Implications for Multicultural Career Counseling

Comparative analysis of 204 African-American and White students' perceptions toward secondary vocational education revealed that students formed perceptions toward these programs from a multidimensional perspective. Generally, African-American female students held positive perceptions whereas African-American male students held negative perceptions toward vocational education programs.     

Career Counseling Specialty: History,Development, and Prospect

This article contains an overview of the historical development of the specialized practice, preparation standards, and credentialing of career counseling. Discussion also focuses on commonalities of career counseling, general counseling, and other specialized forms of counseling, with attention to questions and implications for the future of career counseling practice and standards.     

Some Implications of Life-Span Development for Counseling Psychology

Current models of personality and career development are criticized for their failure to recognize the developmental processes that occur throughout adulthood. Recent research in adult personality and social development suggests that adults experience a number of predictable transitional and stable periods, each of which is characterized by specific developmental tasks. The implications of this research for counseling psychologists' work with adult clients are discussed. Counseling psychologists are encouraged to adopt a more positive view of the roles that crises play in adult personality and career growth.