Recent Career Development Research on Physical Disabilities

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Veterans Day November 11, I gleaned some practice tips from recent research studies on physical disability and career development.

The goal is to inform and link career development practitioners working with disabled clients to research and resources they may not be aware of. 

Why should we pay attention to disability in career development? 

1. In 2005, one in five U.S. residents reported some level of disability (U.S. Census 2008) with the number rising with large numbers of returning veterans. 
2. Individuals with disabilities comprise the largest minority group in the United States, with almost half the population living with one or more chronic health conditions. (Foley-Nipcon and Lee, 2012)

Finding: Severity of the disability and age of disability onset matters

When counseling physically disabled individuals, “the perceived severity of the disability and the point in the life span at which it occurred are not negligible details…”*

Study authors found that:

• Disability severity and age of onset significantly relate self-efficacy with Realistic, Artistic, Social and Conventional domains. Only the Investigative domain had insignificant relation – perhaps because of its focus “on mental tasks performed alone and that require minimal physical mobility."
•  “[S]elf-rated disability severity does not have a detrimental relation with vocational self-efficacies among those who become disabled early in life.”
•  By contrast, “individuals who become disabled later in life show a steeply negative relationship between self-rated disability severity and self-efficacies.”

*Tenenbaum, R. Z., Byrne, C. J., and Dahling, J. J. (2014). Interactive Effects of Physical Disability Severity and Age of Disability Onset on RIASEC Self-Efficacies, Journal of Career Assessment, Vol. 22(2) 274-289.  Note: this study did not include anyone with blindness. Please see any other limitations the authors list.

This study supports recommendations in the diverse populations chapter of NCDA’s Career Development Facilitator “Facilitating Career Development: Student Manual (Rev. 2^nd Edition). It recommends that practitioners consider when in the lifespan the disability occurred – taking into account possible feelings of loss, guilt and grief.

Additional resources:

National Career Development Association website’s List of Resources for People with Disabilities

Eby, L. T., Johnson, C. D., & Russell, J. E. A. (1998). A psychometric review of career assessment tools for use with diverse individuals. Journal of Career Assessment, 6, 269–310.

Feldman, D. C. (2004). The role of physical disabilities in early career: Vocational choice, the school-to-work transition, and becoming established. Human Resource Management Review, 14, 247–274.

Foley-Nicpon, M., & Lee, S. (2012) Disability research in counseling psychology journals: A 20-year content analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology 59, 392–398.

Peterson, D. B., & Elliott, T. R. (2008). Advances in conceptualizing and studying disability. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (4th ed., pp. 212–230). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

If you know of other research or resources I have not included, please leave a comment and I will add it to the post.

5 Tips for Introverts' Success in Career Choices and in School

Introverts face certain challenges to their success at work and in the classroom. Introversion can also be a benefit.  Identifying the right compatible work and school environments can increase your chances of success.

The Introversion-Extroversion Scale with Holland's Hexagon

By combining what we know about introverts with Holland's theory of person-environment match, Career Key author and counseling psychologist Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC gives you five tips for introverts' success in this new self-help article. Find it at the Introverts link above or in our Choose a Career section.

Best Online Resources for Learning about College Majors in the U.S.

For students who want to learn about college majors and training programs, we’ve chosen the best online resources with advice on how to use them. Each site has certain advantages depending on what kind of information you are looking for.

Start by narrowing your college majors choices to those that match your Holland personality types. If you make a close personality-major match, studies show you're more likely to succeed in college.  Career Key’s articles help you get started, including these:

• How to choose a major;
• Descriptions of Holland’s six college major environments; with activities on how to find one that fits you; and
• The benefits and challenges of liberal arts majors.

Once you've narrowed your options, you'll want to learn more about each one as part of a good, 4 step decision making process. These websites can help:

BigFuture by the CollegeBoard

Best for:

• Descriptions of a major

How to use it:

• Go to the majors and career exploration page.
• In the box, “Want to explore college majors?” type in a major you want to research.

Look at audiology as an example.  There’s an easy to read description of the major, questions to ask yourself that are related to that major, lists of helpful high school courses, and typical courses offered in the major.  

Occupational Outlook Handbook

Best for:

• “How to Become One” [a career choice],
• Easy to read and understand education and training information for people with specific careers in mind.

How to use it:

•  At their home page, enter an occupation in the top “Search Handbook” box:
• Click on the occupation you want.
• Click on the tab, “How to Become One.” Also click on the tab “Contacts for More Info.” You’ll find links to national organizations that often guide you to more local education sources.
• If you're using the Career Key test, click on the jobs you chose to learn more about to see the Handbook's listing for an occupation.

Education +Training Finder at CareerOneStop.org

Best for:

• Finding local education and training options;
• Finding local education, training, and licensing required for a specific occupation.

How to use it:

• At the Education and Training Finder page, search for an occupation from the “Occupation Profile,” choose your state, and your statewide information will be pulled up;
• Scroll down to Education and Training and you’ll see the types of majors or “instructional programs” related to the career. 
• Go further and you’ll see a link under the “Educational Attainment” box for “colleges, training schools, and instructional programs for this occupation.” Click on it and a list of statewide schools offering the major will be shown. Any links to apprenticeships and training programs will also be shown.

U.S. Department of Education’s College Navigator

Best for:

• Finding a college that offers a particular major or training program;  

College Navigator is an unbiased resource, where no one pays to be listed or promoted.  Watch our short YouTube video on how to use the College Navigator.

Soon, I’ll follow up with a similar post on researching majors and programs in Canada for our Canadian audience.

College and Career Success: Is Your State a Leader or Laggard?

Promising careers require some post-high school training and education; students and parents need to be educated consumers. While there is a lot of criticism about graduation rates and unsavory recruitment practices at for-profit colleges, there is plenty of criticism to go around for public colleges' performance.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) just released its "Leaders and Laggards" State-by-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education.  Be sure to click on your state's individual report card and overall recommendations.

You can see a summary of findings on the Career Tech Blog - these are the three that stuck out the most to me:

"Four-Year Completion Rates
In most states, only half of students at four-year public colleges complete a degree, in 17 states, less than half of all first-time bachelors-seeking students complete a degree within six years";

"Two-Year Completion Rates
...more than half of states have a two-year completion rate at or below 25 percent"..: and

"Linking Postsecondary Data to Labor Market
Only 22 states have systems in place to track the success of graduates once they enter the labor force and to make those data public..."


While others focus on big-picture, long-term, bureaucratic change (good luck!), I'm more focused on how we can help individual students, parents, and counselors improve their chances of success now. The best practical takeaway from this report is for students and parents to learn their state's strengths and weaknesses in providing education. If nothing else, you'll know what to look for and avoid, and what to expect as far as your state's performance. And when you go through the process of choosing a school or program, you'll know to ask for more information about graduation rates and support for students looking for a job post-graduation.

I don't know that I've given up on government for problem-solving (or trust the for-profit sector to do it either) - but it's clear to me that if you are or have a child in secondary school or college right now, it's up to you to help yourself choose a career or college major you won't regret. Gathering the best quality information you can is part of making good decisions.

How to Choose an Encouraging College Major Environment that Leads to Success

When you choose a college major, you are also choosing an environment- with surroundings and conditions that an encourage and discourage you.

For you to be successful, research shows that you should choose a college major environment compatible with your Holland personality.

To learn about how professors create this environment, and how to learn more about whether it's the right personality fit for you, visit Career Key's new 3 part series of self-help articles:

1. Personality-College Major Match, Why it is Important - recommendations on matching your Holland personality to majors;
2. The Holland College Major Environments - how they are created and a description of what the six Holland environments are; and
3. Learn More about College Major Environments - practical, concrete steps you can take to investigate the environments that interest you.

Be sure to explore Career Key's other articles on college major advice, like:

Choosing a College Major

Liberal Arts, Humanities, and General Studies Majors

Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway

and our related free PDF e-books:

Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality; What does the research say?

Personality-College Major Match and Student Success: Professionals Guide

Make Career and College Major Decisions Based on Research: What we might learn from Bill Gates

Given our obsession with using research to help students make better career and college major decisions – this particular quote stuck out to me from Bill Gates’ Wall Street Journal interview last weekend, “Was the $5 BillionWorth It?”:

"I bring a bias to this," says Mr. Gates. "I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts." Compared with R&D spending in the pharmaceutical or information-technology sectors, he says, next to nothing is spent on education research. "That's partly because of the problem of who would do it. Who thinks of it as their business? The 50 states don't think of it that way, and schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research."

Fortunately for people making career and education decisions, a huge amount of peer-reviewed research has already been done.

Research shows what leads to job and career satisfaction – using Holland’s Theory to match your personality to careers and college majors. And for you to see the benefits, you have to use a scientifically valid assessment of Holland's 6 personality types. To learn more:

• Holland’s Theory of Career Choice 
• Choosing a College Major 
• Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway
• Choosing a College Based on Your Personality; What does the research say? (PDF for students, parents, counselors and career development professionals)
• Key Piece in College Completion Missing: Personality Major Match (PDF for educators, counselors, and policy-makers)
• The Career Key Manual (more about our scientifically valid Holland assessment and our personality match to careers, college majors, and career clusters)

New College Major-Personality List Promises Better Grades & College Retention

Career Key is the first to classify all current college majors in the U.S. and Canada according to Holland's six personality types. Because research (PDF) shows that choosing a college major matching your personality predicts grades earned, persistence, and graduation rate, creation of this list of college majors is an important advance for students and college retention in general.

To learn more, please read the latest Press Release at PRWeb.

Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality

                                                          
Deciding on a college major, training program, or career cluster/career pathway? Or know someone who is? Please check out and share with others our new free PDF e-book called "Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: what does the research say?" by Career Key author Lawrence K. Jones, Ph.D., NCC.  For more visual overview of the e-book, I just posted the above on YouTube and this slideshow on Slideshare:

Choose a College Major That Fits Your Personality

View more presentations from Juliet Jones, GCDF, J.D..

To read and share the press release that just went out, visit this college majors news from PRWeb.

The e-book briefly explains the research investigating the match between personality and college majors. Then it gives students, parents, and adults changing careers practical advice for taking advantage of the research.

Counselors and educators will also be interested in the research findings - to enhance their programs helping people achieve success in college.

Whew!  This has been a lot of work but worth it . . .  Tell me what you think about this new e-book report - we're looking forward to feedback.

John L. Holland's Papers Now Available at the University of Missouri

If you're a graduate student or scholar doing research on John L. Holland, the author of Holland's Theory of Career Choice on which The Career Key test is based, his papers are now archived in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection (WHMC) of the Ellis Library at the University of Missouri (UM).  Read more about his papers and Dr. Holland's relationship to the University at the UM College of Education website.

For a preliminary listing of the collection's contents, please visit the John L. Holland Papers page at the WHMC website.

New Study: Matching Your Holland Personality with Your Career Boosts Earnings

Matching your Holland interests or personality to your career choice or "job congruence" leads to higher earnings, according to a new research study involving alumni from 300 U.S. colleges and universities. The study appears in the journal Labour Economics and authors are from the University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth, and ACT, Inc., respectively. (Citation below)

In short:

• choosing a career that is consistent with or matches your Holland interests (RIASEC types) results in higher earnings;
• Job congruence affects earnings almost to the same order of magnitude as additional years of schooling.

To take advantage of these findings and all the research supporting Holland's Theory of Career Choice in career and education decision-making, it is very important that you use a scientifically valid measure of Holland's personality types. You need to be confident that the test has been proven to accurately measure what it says it measures.

On the Career Key website, we have tips on how to tell whether or not a test is "scientifically valid", including a download of a recent National Career Development Association Career Developments magazine article about evaluating and choosing a career test written by Career Key author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones.

Study Citation:
Neumann, G., Olitsky, N., Robbins, S. (2009) Job congruence, academic achievement, and earnings. Labour Economics, 16, 503-509.