CareerSteer – careers test for career choice www.careersteer.org
Vocational Choice and Development. Winter, 1997.
DCG, College of Guidance Studies, Swanley.
Cole Davis
Does Trait and Factor theory offer hopes of a neat match between
jobs that are waiting to be filled and people who want jobs?
Trait factor theory can indeed offer a match between
individuals and jobs. It seeks "to measure empirically those
variations in personality, interests, and abilities and to relate
those traits to career plans that would make a good fit."
(Seligman, 1994).
Neat matching is of course debatable, given the elements of
self-report, usually off-job testing conditions, and unruly
opportunity structures (c.f. Roberts, 1977). After describing
the theory and its strengths and weaknesses, it is intended to
discuss those of rival theories of career development; the
careers adviser may see career or life stages, economic and
interpersonal influences, and the effects of prior experience as
seminal influences, competing perspectives or confounding
variables. According to the strength of such attitudes, trait
factor may be seen as a harmful irrelevance, a provider of tools
for the eclectic practitioner, or a valuable theory in its own
right: a comparative assessment may therefore clarify the
strengths of trait factor's claim.
None of these interpretations are ruled out by a broad
definition of careers development as an unfolding process of pre-
work socialisation, career choice, and transitions in
relationships between individuals and work. Various forms of
assessment may be used - or not - at any part of this process, in
schools careers advice, further and higher education, and adult
guidance, as well as part of training and development programmes
and outplacement counselling.
The methodological notion views psychometric testing as a
supporting tool (Yost & Corbishley, 1987), with other theoretical
models guiding its usage. The adoption of this or a 'harder'
stance in favour of trait factor theory will be considered after
an appraisal of its position is followed by its consideration
alongside other theories.
Psychometric testing is perhaps the flagship of trait factor
theory. Whilst measures such as attainment and work samples may
be more valid (in more than one sense), the reputation of trait
factor tends to rise and fall with tests.
The unpopularity of trait factor theory as a system of
thinking may derive from its origins as a narrowly focused
approach. The educational testing tradition of Binet was
transferred with ever increasing rapidity to occupational
selection during the demands of the world wars; in both cases,
the concentration was on ability, and more particularly on
general intelligence. Frank Parsons (1909), generally regarded
as the first exponent of career development, was also interested
in aptitudes and interests, but assumed these to be stable and
relatively unchanging. His system, involving an alignment of
self-knowledge of these attributes with awareness of
opportunities, was developed further (e.g. Williamson, 1939), but
retained a similar narrow focus until the 1950s (Seligman, 1994).
The development of tests can be seen to parallel this. The
Vocational Interest Blank, precursor of the Strong Interest
Inventory, appeared in 1927, with personality inventories
appearing in the 1930s; by the 1950s, assessment was seen as
integral to careers counselling (Seligman, 1994).
The trait factor theory evolved into a congruence model
(Holland, 1973): people seek occupational environments which are
congruent with their personalities. As well as the assumption of
measured and practical significant differences between people
suited to different occupations, well-adapted individuals within
an occupation are seen to share psychological characteristics,
individual differences should interact significantly with
occupational differences, and job and person characteristics
should be consistent enough to predict long term outcomes (Rounds
& Tracey, 1990). Holland developed a theory of 'person-
environment fit': individuals would seek out and create
environments that allowed for their idiosyncrasies within a
reciprocal process. His latest version (Holland, 1985) tried to
incorporate socio-economic status, gender, ability and
upbringing. Extensive research has supported many aspects of
his theory (Yost & Corbishley, 1987; Spokane, 1985), which does
seem to allow for factors outside of the purely intrapersonal.
In spite of such refinements, trait factor theory became
increasingly unpopular in the 1970s, described as going into
'incipient decline' (Crites, 1981) and moribund (Zytowski and
Borgen, 1983). This was related to a prescriptive model of
guidance, Rodger's Seven Point Plan (1952); a sustained change of
attitudes to the use of psychometric tests, with concerns about
the possible negative impact upon women and people from minority
groups; and Mischel's anti-trait critique (1968), emphasising
situational influences, part of a wider 'nature/nurture' debate.
A hangover from the 1970s zeitgeist may be partly to blame for
the persistence of negative attitudes within the general public,
popular sociological and psychological explanations perhaps
having failed to make the paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962) back to an
essentially scientific, and thus falsifiable approach (Popper,
1959). The opposition to positivistic methodologies was often a
humanistic one, a parallel being the antipsychiatry of Laing
(1965) and Szasz (1961). The fact that tests have continued to
be evaluated in the contexts of gender and ethnic norms seems to
have passed many commentators by (as has the efficacy of
medication in treating mental illness).
Accumulating research, however, shows that personality traits
are stable in adulthood (Rounds & Tracey, 1990). Professional
psychologists' criticisms diminished over the 1980s with major
modifications within the field of test development via item
analysis and an increased sensitivity in the creation of test
norms.
More informed criticism of applied trait factor theory centres
around the role of the psychometric test user (Anastasi, 1992).
Tyler (1984) points out the limitations of tests, but his main
points relate to 'test and tell', a lack of background
information or context, essentially a matter of practitioner
support. A major survey of American psychologists and
educationalists found that the worst problem within schools was
the "misinterpretation of and over-reliance on test scores"
(Snyderman & Rothman, 1987). The problem here would appear to be
the continuance of a narrow popular notion of trait factor
theory, even when this is a favourable one.
In Britain, more negative general impressions, or disregard,
would appear to be the case. Almost all interviews observed by
the writer on work experience placement contained an estimate of
clients' abilities, often teachers' predictions, in order to
consider the realism of proposed career and training decisions.
No practitioners claimed to be influenced by trait factor,
however, and payment rather than need determined the use of
tests. Computer aided guidance - essentially interest
inventories with chips - were at times used, but often without
support. This rough and ready approach is an indication of the
theory's standing rather than its efficacy.
"Correlational studies consistently show significant, positive
relationships between congruence and academic performance and
persistence, job satisfaction, stability of choice, perceived
congruence, and personality, but nonsignificant relationships
between congruence and self-concept or sociability." (Spokane
1985) This indicates a high degree of validity in relation to
matching people with jobs.
Arguably, self-concept and sociability should not be expected
to correlate with congruence. Alternatively, trait factor theory
is still in need of modification. A third argument is that we
should expect and desire a difference between self-concept and
congruence if tests are indeed of greater value than subjective
impressions. If, however, these are considered to be true
deficits, self-awareness often being a stated objective guidance,
then such qualities may be found amongst alternative theories.
An early application of the developmental perspective to
careers was that of Ginzberg et al (1951). Derived from
Buehler's life stage schema (1933), this is generally regarded as
an incomplete approach to the developmental concept, descriptive
rather than analytical, made with small samples, mainly affluent
middle class males (Yost & Corbishley, 1987).
Super (1957;1981) also adopts a stage theory, derived from the
work of Erikson (1959). Individuals match their self-concepts
against their pictures of known occupations within stages of
Growth, Exploration, Establishment, Maintenance and Decline. In
his 'Life-Career Rainbow' (1980), Super attempts to bring in the
variety of roles assumed by individuals in their lifetimes, as
well as a variety of personal and situational determinants. Such
complexity is unlikely to be of practical use (Yost & Corbishley,
1987). Super's self-concept theory also appears to be of greater
applicability to able young people than to others (Kidd, 1984a).
Other developmental formulations derived from a study entitled
'The Seasons of a Man's Life' (Levinson et al, 1978) and from the
career development perspective of Edgar Schein (1978), in which
he produced another notion of self-concept, the 'career anchor'.
For the purposes of examining the research evidence, the
developmental theories will be considered as a single body.
An a priori criticism of developmental theories, that they are
inclined to predict a nomothetic and even self-perpetuating set
of milestones, is supported by the research. There is very
little support for the ideas of adolescent turmoil, stress and
identity crises (Coleman, 1992). As mentioned before,
personality traits would appear to be relatively stable in
adulthood and may tend to transcend proposed developmental
stages. The careers of women are also likely to differ from
expected developmental norms through different marriage and
childbearing arrangements and ages (Gallos, 1989; Sekaran & Hall,
1989).
Developmental theories may, therefore, be either over
prescriptive or too affected by individual circumstances to be of
practical use in systematic assessment or guidance. The writer
saw few applications; such as they were tended to be
practitioners' reflections on diverse ethnic family pressures.
Whilst theories such as Holland's may not devote much time to
describing the processes leading to occupational preferences,
they could be described as presenting a snapshot of individuals
at particular times, giving insight into current preferences,
with more enduring measures of personality, intelligence and
aptitudes. Rather than being the servant of developmental
models, doing the technological donkey work, test users are more
likely to consider broad developmental bands in assisting
interpretation of more tangible analyses.
At their strongest, developmental theories may justify the use
of testing by providing a context. Gottfredson (1981), for
example, recommends the use of psychometric tests with
adolescents because they "often have difficulty figuring out what
they like and what they can do, which makes it difficult for some
of them to decide which occupation to pursue ..." Similarly,
mature people may find ability tests of use, assuming that
schooling was not representative of ability, or that a particular
ability or aptitude has remained untested.
Other developmental models include themes of organisational
adjustment or socialisation (Nicholson, 1984; Van Maanen and
Schein, 1979) and Schein's career anchors, self-perceived
abilities, motivation and attitudes. A variety of inventories
are devoted to this sort of developmental work.
Before leaving the area of developmental theories, a short
note should be made of a related area, that of psychodynamically
based theories. Based upon the needs based motivation theory of
Maslow (1954), Roe (1956) designed a model describing a basic
orientation to or away from people, later modified in the area of
early parent-child relations. There has been little empirical
support for her views (Osipow, 1973). In parallel, the
psychological tests most akin to this area, T.A.T. and Rorschach,
are not psychometric tests in the sense of containing objective
measures, are not part of the trait factor model given their
individual-based approach, and are not supported by validity
studies.
Another perspective which may be seen to have relevance to the
matching of people with jobs is that which considers the social
environment to be crucial. Ken Roberts (1977) may consider the
individual's viewpoint to be largely irrelevant in any analysis
of transition, social stratification being the main variable.
Law (1981) focuses upon the local community in his community
interaction theory; the central feature of his analysis is the
process of negotiation of 'possible future selves' which should
be explored with young people (Kidd & Killeen, 1992). An
independent study by Kidd (1984b) tended to support Law's model:
all but one of the pupils interviewed mentioned friends,
relatives or teachers as influential in one way or another. Out
of Law's proposed modes of influence, feedback, support,
modelling, information and expectations, the latter was not
supported by Kidd. Kidd's study acknowledged the small part
played by careers teachers and careers officers in the pupils'
thinking about work.
That one is 'up against it' is not an argument for giving up.
Given the often poor guidance available, it is necessary for
guidance professionals to provide the best services available in
order to influence the local community. A variety of test
facilities, computer-aided or otherwise, may enable the careers
services to retain some prestige. They also help people to
recognise their qualities and potential. Whilst socioeconomic
factors are very likely to affect the level of employment sought,
they still do not account for preferences, the meat of interest
inventories. In any event, discounting individuals' aspirations
or potential because of their background - merely on the grounds
of reduced chances of success - forms a further barrier.
If the multifarious commentators on future labour market needs
are correct, individuals may need transferable skills to cope
with a number of different careers. As well as 'readiness and
ability constantly to reassess expectations', individuals and
their employers are increasingly likely to want to assess the
aptitudes, personality attributes, and values which may lead to
better 'fit' with some types of job and work environment than
with others.
Krumboltz (1976) produced a social learning theory of career
selection. A combination of genetic endowment, environmental
conditions, individual learning and self-observation against
standards produces a dynamic interaction in which various
personal attributes are capable of altering "at any point in
life" (Yost & Corbishley, 1987). Apart from the evidence that
personality tends to be relatively stable over time, such a
theory is not particularly practical without measurement.
Gauging anything but distilled products of the above interactions
is likely to be unrealistic.
When personal history has been taken into account - and this
is relevant for diagnosis and for interpretation and feedback -
one is left with the qualities which make up the individual as he
or she is at the present time. Trait factor theory, in one of
its manifestations, provides this illuminating snapshot.
Walsh (1990) considers failing to use tests as a disservice to
clients; whilst not providing a ready-made identity, they can
clarify and illuminate the view of self (integral to some of the
aforementioned theories).
In any event, the scientific support for the more recent
manifestations of trait factor theory is encouraging, even if
public expectations, funding policy and practitioner skills
require adjustments.
Given the strengths of trait factor theory, and the lack of
empirical support for most theories of vocational choice and
development with obvious practical application, it seems
reasonable to consider it as a major theory in its own right
rather than merely as the source of supporting instrumentation.
It could further be argued that other theories should be used to
support trait factor as sources of interpretive information.
Trait factor theory is not able to produce a 'perfect match'
between people and jobs, given the plethora of variables
involved. Unlike various theories which attempt to deal with
some of those variables, it is well placed for suggesting likely
avenues for self-exploration, in ways which promote the
achievement of potential. Its viability remains to be promoted.
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