A Behavioural Checklist of Career Exploration Activities for use in Vocational Guidance and Research: Preliminary Study

Abstract

Although career exploration is essentially a process for the individual, behavioural counsellors may become involved in its planning, ordering and evaluation. The purpose of the present study was to provide some initial data on a standardised behavioural checklist of career exploration activities — FINDING OUT FACTS ABOUT JOBS. The checklist was designed for use in vocational guidance and research. It contains 40 career exploration activities grouped into six response classes e.g., reading, writing, talking etc. The checklist was administered to 196 vocational guidance and senior high school students. Subjects reported an average of 14.3 career exploration activities, with talking to friends being the most frequent (83%) and writing to unions, the least frequent (2%). Hierarchical cluster analysis of the 40 by 40 squared Euclidean distance matrix betwen items, identified fourteen optimum groups of activities. These were generally grouped together on the basis of level of response. Overall, it was found that activites involving talking and reading were most highly correlated (r = 0.570 p<.001). It was argued that preliminary data from this study provided practitioners with a standardised list, a measure of current achievements, and some basis for individual comparisons in career-exploration. The role of the checklist in behavioural assessment was also outlined.