پرورش تمرین علمی روانشناسی حرفه ای

A strong measurement tradition has produced useful knowledge about individual differences in abilities, interests, personality, and work environments. Vocational psychologists apply this knowledge to assist persons develop their potential or overcome difficulties, and we assist people develop plans, make decisions, and pursue goals by employing products of research on decision making, plans, goals, and feedback. The historical strengths delivered of our research ethos are diminishing today as opinion substitutes for evidence, complex explanations are sought rather than eschewed, and postmodern confusion encroaches on vocational psychology. The Balkanization of the larger discipline contributes to this weakening. The integrity of vocational psychology is threatened by poorly trained “career professionals” and by the World Wide Web, which facilitates the delivery of career assistance without measurement or scientific foundation. Nevertheless, the field's foothold in colleges and universities, the world's population diversity, and the need for people to play ever more productive roles in the economy position the field to renew its momentum. In seizing these opportunities we should (a) renew our linkages with kindred fields; (b) embrace the goals of individuals, employers, and social groups; (c) restore training in psychological measurement; and (d) select and train students who will pursue science in the service of organizational goals and human welfare.

A strong measurement tradition has produced useful knowledge about individual differences in abilities, interests, personality, and work environments. Vocational psychologists apply this knowledge to assist persons develop their potential or overcome difficulties, and we assist people develop plans, make decisions, and pursue goals by employing products of research on decision making, plans, goals, and feedback. The historical strengths delivered of our research ethos are diminishing today as opinion substitutes for evidence, complex explanations are sought rather than eschewed, and postmodern confusion encroaches on vocational psychology. The Balkanization of the larger discipline contributes to this weakening. The integrity of vocational psychology is threatened by poorly trained “career professionals” and by theWorldWideWeb, which facilitates the delivery of career assistance without measurement or scientific foundation. Nevertheless, the field’s foothold in colleges and universities, the world’s population diversity, and the need for people to play ever more productive roles in the economy position the field to renew its momentum. In seizing these opportunities we should (a) renew our linkages with kindred fields;(b) embrace the goals of individuals, employers, and social groups; (c) restore training in psychological measurement; and (d) select and train students who will pursue science in the service of organizational goals and human welfare.

Some obvious steps to strengthen the future of our field emerge from the assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats just described. First, renew vocational psychology’s linkages with industrial-organizational psychology.We should expect all vocational psychologists to be cognizant of all of the major areas of industrial-organizational psychology and really knowledgeable about many of them. Vocational psychologists should keep up with developments in the industrial portion of I/O psychology, including personnel selection, equal employment opportunity practices and problems, job analysis and classification, and ability and personality measurement with employment applications. Vocational psychologists should also keep up with practices and techniques used in organizational psychology, including team building methods, training, behavioral modeling, organizational diagnosis, organizational surveys, and other topics. Links should be constructed or reconstructed with relevant portions of economics and sociology as well. Second, we should not focus so narrowly on the goals sought by individuals, but should conduct research and practice in pursuit of goals sought by employers, ethnic or cultural groups, and the economic system more generally. The vocational well-being of individuals is influenced by the work environments they inhabit. For example, if an assessment with the Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (Holland & Gottfredson, 1994) shows an organizatonal climate of much interpersonal abuse, personal satisfaction is likely to be low for many persons. Recent evidence shows that schools that score high on an Environmental Focus Questionnaire developed to implement Holland’s (1997) environmental identity construct have higher morale, are safer, and have more orderly classrooms (G. D. Gottfredson, 2000). Ignoring organizational and economic arrangements limits the potential power of vocational interventions. We should expect vocational psychology and our students to solve problems through the application of vocational psychology knowledge, theory, and methods in service of organizational goals and human welfare. Third, we should restore an emphasis on training in measurement theory and methods. We should also improve training in statistics, sampling, and reporting. Although the curriculum is becoming crowded, the basics of differential psychology are too important to be squeezed out. Curriculum should be reviewed so that the fundamentals are included. There is not room for everything. Fourth, we should contribute through our research to the occupational database and to knowledge of the design and effects of career assistance delivered via the Web and by nonpsychologists. If the Federal database will be limited to asmall number of sometimes heterogeneous occupational groupings, we may have to develop a “collaboratory” (Finholt & Olson, 1997) to accumulate and quality control data and occupational definitions.Finally, we should select and train students who will pursue research, who are interested in science, and who have past accomplishments in these areas. Organizations involved with vocational psychology should emphasize scientific contributions when recognizing outstanding accomplishments. Training programs should recognize and reward students for scientific contributions and create expectations that graduate students will publish research.