Practice and research in career counseling and development—2003

This annual review of the research and practice literature related to career counseling and development published during 2003 is presented in 6 major areas: professional issues, career assessment, career development, career theory, career interventions, and technology. The authors discuss the implications of the findings in this literature for career counseling practice.

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The task of reviewing a year of professional publications on a topic of deep, personal interest seemed a pleasant challenge to undertake, but as the number of articles climbed, the challenge became daunting. In the end our review included 243 articles, each published in a refereed professional journal in 2003. We started our review by reading each article published in The Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Development, Journal of Career Assessment, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Employment Counseling, Australian Journal of Career Development, and International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance. Next, we selected and read each article related to career counseling and development published in the Journal of Counseling & Development, The Counseling Psychologist, Journal of Counseling Psychology, Professional School Counseling, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, Journal of College Student Development, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, South African Journal of Psychology, and International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling. Further, we conducted a search through PsycINFO using a set of selected career development terms and identified a few additional articles of interest from Social Forces, Journal of Business and Psychology, Journal of Social Service Research, Sociology, The Policy Studies Journal, Journal of Labor Research, Counseling Psychology Quarterly, Australian Journal of Psychology, Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling, and Journal of Aging Studies. No books, book chapters, monographs, or electronic media are included in this review; thus, our review is not exhaustive. We discussed a majority of the articles that we reviewed in the first draft, but space limitations required that the discussion of a large number of the articles be deleted. (See the reference list for all 2003 articles that formed the basis for this review.)

The 2003 career counseling and development literature presented here is organized into six areas: professional issues, career assessment, career development, career theory, career interventions, and technology. These areas, with the exception of career development and career theory, were the focal points of at least one special issue or special section in The Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Development, Journal of Career Assessment, or Journal of Vocational Behavior. An outstanding characteristic of a special issue is that a given topic can be treated with unusual breadth and depth by a group of invited scholars with recognized expertise. We present the 2003 literature here by first reviewing in some detail the content covered in each special issue and then follow that substantive description with a brief synthesis of each related study of significance in the remaining literature. For the areas of career development and career theory, qualitative and quantitative studies published on a wide range of theoretical constructs and formulations are reviewed to highlight advancements in understanding and facilitating the career development of persons throughout the life span.

Professional Issues

The fall 2003 issue of The Career Development Quarterly (Savickas, b) comprised responses to challenges to well-known experts to share their perspectives on the profession's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The results provided a superb summary and analysis of the most salient issues facing the profession today. The statements collectively reminded those of us of in the profession of the significant contributions that we have made and, at the same time, served to apprise us of potentially difficult challenges ahead. Identified issues included a call to advocacy, a targeted research agenda, a deepening commitment to a broader and more culturally contextual framework of career counseling, and professional training enhancement.

Call to Advocacy

A renewed call for advocacy and social reform was evident in the statements of today's leaders. Herr articulated a need to shape public policy in such a way that legislation would bring career counseling to the foreground as a major force in human capital development. Although career counseling has been recognized in labor market legislation as an important service to be offered at major transitional points in life, such as school-to-work, "relatively little legislation during the past 100 years has identified career counseling as a stand-alone process or as the sole focus of legislation" (p. 10). It is time to advocate for a full continuum of career counseling services that range from the more traditional services of interest assessment, decision-making assistance, and goal-setting support to the other end of the continuum, where career counselors help workers reduce stress and learn to deal more effectively with workplace anger, depression, work/life role imbalance, and interpersonal conflicts on the job. It is this end of the continuum of career counseling services--the mental health issues (Sonnenberg & Chen) and the emotional aspects of work (Parmer & Rush)--that is most likely to typify career counseling in the 21st century. Experts urge the profession to serve as a much stronger advocate for career counselors and for career counseling. Enough is known about the general effectiveness of career interventions to lead the profession toward more aggressive and forthright marketing (Niles).