Counselor Trainees' Interprofessional Self-Efficacy After a Career Development Intervention

Career development is a lifelong process of learning, working, and transitions that move a person closer to their preferred future. This study investigated the use of a career development intervention to help counselor trainees in a master's program and allied health students with integrating new perspectives in their future careers. This qualitative study with a diverse group of 12 participants provides important insight into career thoughts, career self-efficacy, and potential career development opportunities through interprofessional engagement career interventions. The findings are novel and have never been addressed in an empirical study for counselor trainees.     

Impact of Worry on Career Thoughts,Career Decision State,and Cognitive Information Processing Skills

Sixty-nine Amazon Mechanical Turk workers completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (Berle et al., 2011), the Career Thoughts Inventory (Sampson et al., 1996a), and the Career State Inventory (Leierer et al., 2017). Worry was significantly correlated with negative career thinking and its dimensions of decision-making confusion and commitment anxiety, with readiness and its dimensions of clarity and certainty, and with the self-assessed cognitive information processing skills of self-knowledge, options knowledge, decision-making, and executive processing. Worry was also found to predict the degree of readiness for career decision-making, negative career thinking, and cognitive information processing requisite skills.     

Examining Career Readiness in a Liberal Arts Undergraduate Career Planning Course

This study explored a career planning course at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities’ College of Liberal Arts. The course aimed to improve students’ career readiness through reflections about their liberal arts education. Individual interviews explored how the course affected students’ ability to articulate the value of their education to potential employers. The authors found that students learned how to articulate career competencies and developed an understanding of what a liberal arts education entails and how it aligns with career readiness. Implications for career development practice are highlighted.     

Effects of Self-Compassion and Social Support on Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual College Students' Positive Identity and Career Decision-Making

The purpose of this study was to explore the serial mediating effects of self-compassion and social support on the relationship between positive identity and career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) college students. A total of 222 LGB (109 bisexual, 113 lesbian/gay) students participated in the study. Results supported the mediating roles of self-compassion and social support. Specifically, self-compassion and social support sequentially mediated the relationship between positive identity and CDMSE, and the patterns of the sequence of the mediators were different between the bisexual and lesbian/gay groups. Implications for career counselors and future research are discussed.     

Personality and coping in life challenge narratives

BackgroundSelf-reported personality traits are known to correlate with self-reported coping strategies. However, these correlations may be inflated by common method variance. The current study examined personality traits and coping strategies in autobiographical narratives.MethodIn open-ended interviews, 122 late-midlife participants described their single greatest life challenge. Participants’ responses were content coded for various coping strategies. We examined correlations between narrated coping strategies and self-reported personality traits assessed by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory.ResultsExtraversion was associated with narrated engagement coping. Neuroticism was associated with narrated disengagement coping. A trend suggested that conscientiousness was negatively associated with narrated disengagement coping. Surprisingly, openness was negatively associated with narrated problem-solving.ConclusionsThe current study replicates and extends the personality and coping literature into the domain of life narrative. Associations between extraversion, neuroticism, and coping styles appear to be robust outside the context of self-report coping questionnaires.     

Les pratiques d’evaluation utilisees dans les structures de conseil en recrutement : quelques determinants

Referring to the work of Bruchon-Schweitzer & Ferrieux (1991) and Balicco (1999), the present study describes the recruitment practices of different types of organizations (N=327, 134 consulting companies and 193 temporary placement firms). We hypothesised that job position and recruiter characteristics (sex, age, level and type of education, status, and recruitment experience) would influence the use of selection techniques. Results revealed that choice of selection techniques is not based on a scientific evaluation of applicants. Job position seems to strongly determine use of personality assessment techniques. Further, recruiter characteristics only seem to determine choice of less valid techniques. In the discussion, a theoretical model of choices made by recruiters and some courses of action are proposed.     

Cultural Psychology, Consciousness andTheology: Continuing the Dialogue

This essay extends arguments that cultural psychology is useful for dialogue with Christian theology by indicating its relevance for theologies of consciousness. Donald's cultural account is outlined, followed by Davies's theological treatment of compassionate consciousness. Interactions are considered between the two approaches, which are shown to be co-implicated in the teaching ministry of Jesus, and the subsequent development of the Christian religion, and to accompany the shift from discipleship, through apostleship, to a trans-generational cultural-symbolic system assisted by the development of theology. The essay concludes with reflections on the challenge to psychology of the ontological reality of being 'in Christ'.     

Introducing humanistic group counselling for somatisation in a primary care practice: Preliminary findings

Can group counselling help patients who present with symptoms that cannot be explained medically? Preliminary results of working with one such group are reported. Six patients in a primary care practice were offered weekly sessions for half a year. The findings suggest that the patients attended all group sessions. The patients reported experiences known to be related to group counselling, and when the group ended, patient reports show that the severity of their problems was reduced significantly (p<.001). Furthermore, during the six months after the group ended patients significantly (p<.025) reduced their visits to their general practitioners. These results seem to call for wider use of humanistic group counselling with somatising patients and further research into the impact of such form of counselling.