Practice and research in career counseling and development--2006.

Byars-Winston and Fouad described the importance of multicultural competence for effective career interventions. They expanded the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model (CACCM; Fouad & Bingham, 1995) using metacognition, the counselors' active incorporation of their own cultural frameworks, values, and worldview into the counseling process. The expanded CACCM included seven steps. In the first step--establishing a relationship--the counselor questions the client to determine his or her plans and goals for counseling, the gap between client knowledge and his or her context, and the client's strengths and challenges. In the second step, identification of career issues, the counselor's awareness of his or her own reactions to the client's cultural background, the client's internal conflict, and possible issues the client is willing to address or will avoid addressing are discussed. In the third step, the effect of cultural values on career issues are discussed. In the fourth step--goal setting--the counselor assesses the appropriateness of the goal for the client's cultural context. The counselor also needs to be aware of his or her own reactions, especially if the client's goals are different from those of the counselor. In the fifth step, the counselor evaluates the client's perceptions of the effectiveness of the interventions and how this effectiveness is determined. In the sixth step, the outcomes of the counselor's actions and intervention strategies are evaluated. The cultural congruence between counseling outcome and the client's desired goals are also evaluated in this step. Finally, in the seventh step, the focus is on implementation of the client's plans and follow-up. In conclusion, the authors believed that metacognitive strategies have great potential for increasing multicultural competence of career counselors. Continuous self-reflection during the counseling process could enhance the counselor's cultural competence in building culturally appropriate intervention strategies.

Gati, Fishman-Nadav, and Shiloh investigated the relationships between self-estimated abilities, measured abilities, and preference for using career-related abilities. The highest correlations were found between the preference for using an ability and self-estimates of the ability. The gaps between measured abilities and self-estimated abilities varied, with 69% of the clients overestimating their abilities whereas only 9% underestimated them. This finding implies that self-estimate might mediate the relationships between one's preference for using an ability and the respective measured ability. In addition, gender differences were found. Women significantly underestimated their general learning, verbal, and spatial abilities, supporting Betz's (1994) suggestion that one of the problems in women's career development is the underutilization of their abilities.

Job Satisfaction and Work Adjustment

Variables associated with job satisfaction were examined by Allen, Lentz, and Day. They found that individuals who served as a mentor to others perceived higher job satisfaction and obtained higher salary and promotion rates. This study suggested that mentoring others is related to both subjective and objective indicators of career success.

Gonzalez-Roma, Schaufeli, Bakker, and Lloret examined the concepts of emotional exhaustion and cynicism (the core dimensions of burnout) and vigor and dedication (the core dimensions of engagement). They investigated whether the two concepts were scalable on two distinct underlying bipolar dimensions (i.e., energy and identification, respectively). The results obtained using the nonparametric Mokken scaling method in three different samples (Ns = 477, 507, and 381) supported their hypothesis that the core burnout and engagement dimensions could be seen as opposites of each other along two bipolar dimensions called "energy" and "identification."

Work-Family Balance

Cinamon studied two types of conflict between work and family. Work-interfering-with-family conflict, the first type, included stressors from work such as the number of hours devoted to work weekly. The second type of conflict, family-interfering-with-work, included stressors from the family such as the illness of a child, housework, and spousal relationship. Cinamon's findings indicated that women anticipated higher levels of both types of conflict between work and family than did men. They also demonstrated lower efficacy in managing these conflicts than did men. It was suggested that programs are needed to help young adults merge work and family roles. This article highlighted the need for counseling practitioners to design programs that attempt to reduce the client's perceptions of both types of conflict and increase their self-efficacy in dealing with these perceived conflicts.

Perrone, AEgisdottir, Webb, and Blalock proposed a path model to describe the relationship between work and family commitment, work-family conflict, coping, and satisfaction. They found that commitment to family led to higher satisfaction with family. Similarly, commitment to work increased an individual's satisfaction with work. Conflict between work and family was found to be negatively related to family satisfaction but was not significantly related to work satisfaction. Their results showed that family-work conflict did not significantly influence job satisfaction but did affect family satisfaction. Coping, in the model proposed by Perrone et al., was found to be a potential mediator of work-family conflict and satisfaction with work and family. Coping was found to be significantly related to family satisfaction but not to work satisfaction.

Multiple role conflict/balance was also an important issue of concern to international colleagues. For work-school conflict, Adebayo, in Nigeria, found that perceived support, as demonstrated by supervisors, coworkers, and family members, was significantly negatively related to work-school conflict.

Schultheiss discussed the interface of work and family life, focusing on four prominent themes in the work and family literature: (a) the meaning of work embedded in people's lives, (b) multiple life roles, (c) work and family navigation, and (d) supportive family systems. She emphasized the importance of individuals feeling a sense of embeddedness in contemporary society. Schultheiss claimed that to be satisfied in both career and family lives, people need to create a subjective link with others as a social group and experience embeddedness to avoid social isolation. Concepts of multiple role conflict and support systems were also introduced. The idea of multiple roles was originally addressed by Super (1980) and has been highlighted by recent studies. For many individuals, the major roles would be those of worker and family member. The conclusion of this study was that those who are actively involved in the work and family domains can also experience the gratification of their mastery needs.

When trying to balance multiple roles involving work and family responsibilities, many workers experience conflicts. Day and Chamberlain used a sample of female nurses and police officers to examine the direct and indirect relationship of role commitment with work-spouse and work-parent conflict. They found that increased work-spouse conflict was associated with decreased spouse commitment. Increased work-parent conflict was associated with increased parent commitment and decreased spouse and job commitment. Job commitment moderated the relationships between irregular work schedules and work-spouse conflict and also between job control and work-spouse conflict. Parent commitment moderated the relationship between irregular work schedules and work-parent conflict. In conclusion, it was suggested that commitment to certain roles may either alleviate or exacerbate conflict between related roles.

Religion and Spirituality

Aspects of spirituality and religion have been examined regarding their relationship with career variables. Duffy reviewed the current status of this relationship and suggested future directions for research in this area. In general, this study found that some aspects of spirituality and religion were positively related to career-decision self-efficacy, career values, and job satisfaction. Duffy also proposed theoretical models that would explore the connection between these variables. These models were (a) Witmer and Sweeney's (1992) Holistic Model of Wellness, (b) Miller-Tiedeman's (1994) Lifecareer Model, (c) Brewer's (2001) Vocational Souljourn Model, and (d) Bloch's (2004, 2005) Model of Spirituality and Career Counseling. Duffy suggested that, in the future, career counselors should investigate the extent to which an individual's spirituality and religiosity shape the types of careers they decide to pursue. He also asserted that a comprehensive and empirically tested model is needed for measuring the role that spirituality and religion play in the promotion or hindrance of healthy career development. In addition, it also seems that an investigation is needed of how economic status and education level relate to spirituality, religiosity, and career development.