An example of vocational awareness that includes these elements comes from my own experience. Social parties were, and still are, considered very important in the predominantly black neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side. The big party nights are Fridays and Saturdays, so most people from this community who seek employment attempt to choose a job that will keep their weekends completely free or let them off before midnight. Hence, an environmental situation, such as social parties, is a vocationally relevant experience and an individual recognizes its importance when selecting a job (a good job, in part, then provides working hours compatible with one's cultural life style).
Relevant Literature
The term awareness has appeared frequently in psychological literature; unfortunately, most writers use the term without providing the reader a clear definition. One notable exception is Angyal, who stated that awareness is the symbolic representation of some portion of our experience. Rogers incorporated Angyal's conception of awareness into his writing and used the term synonymously with consciousness. Beier concluded that reportability is the only operational definition of awareness.
The concept of vocational awareness is more completely described by Super. If, in Super's terms, work is the implementation of the self-concept, vocational awareness is believed to be the directional component of that implementation process. A person could choose any number of jobs from the world of work, however, most people choose a particular job. Their vocational awareness has provided them with that specificity. Super also emphasized that the adolescent is bringing his self, likes, dislikes, and abilities to the vocational exploration process.
Although Super believed that adolescent exploration of the self and work begins at home with the family, then continues in school, and part-time employment, Ginzberg's restatement of his theory of occupational choice pointed to other equally important experiences such as race, sex, neighborhood influences, socioeconomic status factors, and physical capability. Ginzberg described most of these experiential dimensions as constraints on occupational choice. One of the first attempts to integrate Super's description of the self-concept, vocational self-awareness, and vocational behavior was an investigation by Geist, who developed a Picture Interest Inventory to measure vocational self-awareness.
The Vocational Development Project, headed by John O. Crites, was designed to fill the theoretical and psychometric gaps in previous vocational development research. The project attempted to provide a measurement model for vocational maturity, and resulted in the construction of the Vocational Development Inventory (VDI). Among the dispositional response tendencies that the attitude scale of the VDI was constructed to assess were: (1) involvement in the choice process, (2) orientation toward work, (3) independence in decision-making, (4) preference for vocational choice factors, and (5) conceptions of the choice process. The competence test of the VDI focused on comprehension and vocational problem-solving; the attitude scale was used throughout the project as the prime measure of vocational maturity. Recently, the VDI has been renamed the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI), to accentuate the developmental variable of maturity.
Vocational maturity is the construct closest to vocational awareness. They are distinguished by the current investigator in three major ways:
- Vocational maturity implies a value of correctness in attitude, while vocational awareness implies the ability to express experiential data.
- Hypothetically, the attribute of vocational awareness precedes vocational maturity. An individual must recognize the importance of vocationally relevant experiences before his attitude toward the world of work can be judged mature or immature.
- Vocational maturity reflects a normative view of attitudes toward the world of work, while vocational awareness reflects only the recognition of the importance of vocationally relevant experiences (even though these experiences may differ across demographically divergent groups).
Operationalizing the Construct
Method
The Vocational Awareness Index (VAI) was developed to measure the construct of vocational awareness and to focus on seven experiential dimensions: socio-economic, familial, environmental-community, educational, ethnic, sex, and physical-capacity. These dimensions reflect the respective seven scales of the VAI. Scale items represented a particular aspect of an experiential dimension in reference to the world of work, and each item was divided into the two response categories of agreement and relevance. The items for the seven scales were rationally derived and constructed to depict situation-specific, vocationally related experiences. Respondents are asked to express agreement or disagreement with item content, as well as determine whether the situation depicted is relevant to them. Items of the VAI appeared in random order without reference to scale designation.
Persons are assessed as vocationally aware if they recognize the reality of the world of work activity expressed by items in the 7 experiential categories and also recognize the relevance of item content to them personally. There is nearly an equal number of agree and disagree items. Each item can receive a total of 2 points (1 point per response category). There are 10 items in each scale and 70 points overall. The maximum score for each scale is 20 points and the maximum score for the entire VAI is 140 points.
The VAI item judges were a Ph.D. level rehabilitation counselor educator, a Ph.D. level city school district special program coordinator, and the vocational education director of a city school district. They unanimously agreed on all items in each scale except the sex scale, where there was 90 per cent agreement. Care was taken to construct items that represented succinct and descriptive situational statements. By employing a formula developed by Fry, the readability of the VAI was found to be at the 7.5 grade level.
The VAI was administered to 35 randomly selected Onondaga County, New York, rural high school adolescents for the purpose of establishing the reliability of the index. Retesting occurred 2 weeks later with a net test-retest sample of 30. For concurrent validation, the VAI was administered, along with the attitude scale of the CMI, to 370 out-of-school Neighborhood Youth Corps intake clientele, beginning out-of-school students of a Syracuse occupational learning center program, and students from various selected high schools in urban and rural areas of Onondaga County, New York and 1 suburban high school in adjacent Madison County, New York. The clustered sampling approach was used, which resulted in a sample of adolescents of divergent ethnic, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Results
The VAI was subjected to the Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 (K-R21) to determine the reliability (internal consistency) of each of the seven VAI scales and of the entire index. These correlations constitute moderate to high reliability for the VAI scales and total index. The test-retest reliability of the VAI was ascertained through Pearson product-moment correlations and intra-class correlations. The familial and ethnic scales have modest test-retest reliability, while the other scales have moderate to high test-retest reliability. The total index demonstrates moderate test-retest reliability.
VAI scale and total score data and CMI attitude scale data were correlated to determine the concurrent validity of the VAI. Low correlations (no higher than .30) were desired to establish that the VAI measures an overlapping but distinctly different psychological construct than does the CMI attitude scale. The VAI socioeconomic and ethnic scales do not correlate with the CMI attitude scale; the VAI familial, environmental-community, educational, sex, and physical-capacity scales and total VAI scores have positive and significant correlations with the CMI attitude scale.
Discussion
It appears that the rational approach to the delineation of the seven vocational awareness domains (VAI scales) and the item content employed in this study resulted in consistent subject responses to the VAI. The modest test-retest reliabilities of the familial and ethnic VAI scales indicate the need for further item refinement in these scales, however, it is believed the preliminary establishment of the VAI would not have been possible without the construction of items based on an integrated, theoretical foundation. It is further suggested that this rational approach contributed to the sufficient reliabilities reported.
In reference to concurrent validity, positive and significant correlations were desired between the VAI scales and CMI attitude scale. However, it was hoped that these correlations would have two characteristics: (1) the correlations should be r=0.30 or below and (2) the correlations for those VAI scales least emphasizing formal educational experiences should be lowest. The highest correlation was between the VAI educational scale and CMI attitude scale (r=0.24). Since the attitude scale was constructed on an age-grade linear model, a scale that depicts vocational situations in an educational context (the VAI educational scale) would have the highest positive and significant relationship to vocational maturity as measured by the CMI attitude scale. All other VAI scales represent a departure from this educational framework, with the ethnic scale, as expected, demonstrating the greatest distinction.
In general, the correlations between the VAI scales and CMI attitude scale followed the pattern sought by the investigator. Except for the VAI educational, familial, and environmental-community scales, correlations were somewhat lower than anticipated. The overall positive and significant VAI-CMI attitude scale correlation is explained by the integration of different vocational awareness situational sets embodied in the VAI that are similar to those vocational areas depicted in the CMI attitude scale not solely dependent on educational development. Thus, the two instruments are similar in their emphasis on vocational functioning. Future research with the VAI should concern the factorial composition of the measure and greater scoring efficiency.
The career counselor will find his job increasingly complex in the coming decades. Rapidly changing technology and life styles will require him to be a highly knowledgeable as well as a personal resource. His knowledge will be increased by the flood of materials and texts pertaining to the occupational information and systems of his times. However, the career counselor may lose his most productive asset, if he is not careful; his ability to relate personally to an individual should be highly protected. He should choose vocational materials and instruments that augment his ability to relate to varying individuals in varying situations. The VAI was conceived as a preliminary step in exploring the area of instrument-assisted career counseling facilitation. It is believed, at the present time, that VAI items may be used to stimulate important areas of discussion without scoring them as an index. Future research may determine the utility in plotting VAI scale patterning to assist in counseling intervention (dealing with potential vocationally related trouble areas). The ability to be personal and preventive rather than impersonal and reactive is greatly needed in all areas of human service.
