Using the Self-Directed Search: Career Explorer with high-risk middle school students

Career Development Quarterly, March, 2006 by Debra S. Osborn, Robert C. Reardon

Reliability analyses were conducted on the total scale for each primary Holland code. Internal consistency reports were Realistic (.86), Investigative (.78), Artistic (.82), Social (.83), Enterprising (.84), and Conventional (.83). Pearson product-moment correlations for the summary scales were all positive and significant at the p < .001 level. Consistency was demonstrated by high correlations between Realistic-Investigative, Investigative-Artistic, Artistic-Social, and Enterprising-Conventional primary types.

Ninety-seven aspirations were listed at the middle school level. The most common aspirations for girls were teacher, lawyer, and singer, whereas professional athlete, lawyer, and doctor were the most common for boys. Aspiration summary codes were examined by gender, and significant differences were found. Boys had higher Realistic and Conventional summary scores, and girls had higher Artistic and Enterprising summary scores.

At the conclusion of the 6-week group career counseling experience, anecdotal comments from students indicated that they had learned about their interests, occupations, postsecondary opportunities, and decision-making approach and how to improve their positive self-talk. In addition, many stated that they found the groups enjoyable and that they would prefer the sessions to be longer in terms of time and the number of sessions. The most common negative statements had to do with physical space, such as the room location.

Implications for Practice

Our results suggest that the SDS:CE is a psychometrically sound instrument for this group of middle school students, specifically, for students who have been identified as being at risk of dropping out of school. On the basis of our experience with running 14 groups, we have suggestions for administration, scoring, and interpretation of the SDS:CE. We recommend that it be administered prior to the first session, which will allow for the profiles to be scored and reports generated (and thus available) for the first counseling session. Second, we recommend that the group leader walk among the students and read the items aloud. We found this to be a useful strategy in minimizing random response patterns and mistakes and helped slower or poor readers to stay on task.

Some students had one very high summary code, such as a 40, and the other scores were similar to each other and much lower. In this case, the group leader would include all occupations listed for that highest code, in addition to the original permutations of the three-letter summary code, with the assumption that the student would be more satisfied with the options that kept that highest code first. Anecdotal statements from students with this adjusted report seem to support this assumption; however, additional research focused on this question should be conducted.

We found some specific interventions to be effective when going over the SDS:CE interpretive reports with students. First, provide students with highlighters for marking occupations as a way to engage them in processing their interpretive reports. Second, a very brief overview of the report contents followed by a period of time for participants to review the report may be preferred to "walking them through the report" page by page. Third, group leaders may find that asking each group member to share with the larger group some themes they saw in the occupations they had highlighted, as well as those that they had crossed out, is a useful activity. Often, this was an eye-opening experience for them, in that they would make statements like "I didn't think about how much I really like working with my hands" or "I guess I really hate any job where I'll be sitting all day." In this way, the SDS:CE interpretive report helped to increase students' self-knowledge as described by CIP theory (Peterson et al., 2002).