Comparing the Effects of the Career Key with Self-Directed Search and Job-OE among Eighth-Grade Students.

Middle school students require assistance in their career development. For example, they need to become more aware of careers, explore their career options, and understand how the choices they make in school will affect their future. There is widespread agreement among adults (Hoyt & Lester, 1995) that more needs to be done in these areas. The recent National Standards for School Counseling Programs published by the American School Counselor Association (Campbell & Dahir, 1997) specify that students will (a) "acquire the skills to investigate the world of work in relation to knowledge of self and to make informed career decisions," (b) "employ strategies to achieve future career success and satisfaction," and (c) "understand the relationship between personal qualities, education and training, and the world of work" (p. 17). One method of helping students in their career development is the use of self-directed career interest inventories like the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1985b), the Job-O Enhanced (Job-OE) (Cutler, Ferry, Kauk, & Robinett., 1995), and the Career Key (Jones, 1987, 1993). Using instruments like these is particularly attractive to school counselors who are in schools with limited resources and who wish to provide career guidance at a low investment of counselor time (Herr & Cramer, 1996). Typically, they are designed to help students become more aware of themselves-their interests, personality, and values; relate these characteristics to possible occupations; expand the number of occupations that they are considering; and stimulate their career exploration behavior (like discussing with parents about possible occupations or going to a library to learn more about careers or colleges). Additionally, research shows that students find these instruments helpful and make gains in some areas considered important to career guidance (e.g., Holland, 1985b; Jones, 1993). The primary focus of this study is on one of these instruments, the Career Key (CK) (Jones, 1997), which is a revision of the original instrument (Jones, 1987). The revision is shorter and more compact; it is 8 pages long compared to the original's 16 pages. It is offered free for noncommercial use, as a public service, by the author from the server at North Carolina State University. It is available via the Internet (http://www.ncsu.edu/ careerkey) in two ways. First, at the website students can complete the assessment section, have the results scored, and relate them to information in the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) (U.S. Department of Labor, 1998). Or, second, a person can print out a camera-ready, paper-pencil copy of the CK, and either (a) complete it themselves, or (b) use this copy to make multiple copies for others to use (e.g., school counselors can make multiple copies of the CK for use in their career guidance program). It is this paper-penal version that is the focus of this investigation. Previous studies of the original Career Key (Jones, 1983,1987,1989,1990,1993) showed that its psychometric characteristics, helpfulness, and effects were similar to other instruments of this type. We were interested in doing similar studies with the revised CK (Jones, 1997). In this study we compare it with two instruments used by middle school counselors, the Self-Directed Search Career Explorer (SDSCE) (Holland & Powell, 1994) and the Job-O Enhanced (Cutler et al., 1995). Specifically, we examined (a) students' satisfaction in using the instruments, (b) the number of occupations suggested by the instruments and the number being considered 3 weeks later, and (c) the variety and frequency of career information seeking over a 3-week period. In addition, we were interested in following up a study of career information seeking among 11th graders done by Jones (1993) where he found that students having high educational aspirations, when compared with those whose aspirations were low, sought career information from a greater variety of sources over a 3-week period. …