Culture and assessment: nomothetic and idiographic considerations.

Araujo and do Ceu Taveira (2007) discussed the results of a longitudinal and contextiialized assessment of young Portuguese children's career development. Interviews of the children were complemented with data collected from their teachers and parents in research suggesting that children have already developed some understanding of occupations and the connection of school to work by the time they are 6 years old. Furthermore, these young children had already begun to develop occupational aspirations, and the influence of gender socialization could be observed in these aspirations. That is, young boys aspired to a wider range of occupations and to more traditionally male occupations, whereas young girls aspired to a more circumscribed range of more traditionally female occupations. Noting the difficulties in assessing children's vocational characteristics (e.g., children's difficulty separating fantasy from reality), the authors also described an inside-out assessment of vocational assessments from the perspectives of children and the key social actors in their social context.

Duarte (2007) thoughtfully explored the balancing of nomothetic and idiographic characteristics in the assessment process. Echoing Leong and Brown's (1995) framework of cultural validity and cultural sensitivity, Duarte used the term ecological relatedness to describe the integration of nomothetic forms of assessment with the idiographic (or local) characteristics of a particular culture. From this perspective, assessment could draw on the complementary strengths of each perspective--balancing the capacity to use well-established instruments and prediction with attention to issues of cultural relevance and the sociopolitical implications of a given assessment. Duarte further argued that the use of psychometric instruments for prediction needs to be complemented by a greater and more systematic appreciation of their implications for socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals.

Summary and Conclusion

This set of presentations extended and thickened the extant scholarly conversation regarding cross-cultural career assessment (e.g., Blustein & Ellis, 2000; Leong & Brown, 1995; Watson et al., 2005), thoughtfully exploring the issues and tensions in nomothetic and idiographic approaches. Although rapprochement between nomothetic and idiographic perspectives was not possible (or may not be desirable) in the course of a daylong meeting, these experts offered exemplars of each perspective on career assessment that mutually informed and enriched the other via discussion and dialogue. Future scholarship in this domain, from both idiographic and nomothetic perspectives, should build on the work of this symposium discussion group to further the understanding of issues regarding cultural validity and cultural specificity (Leong & Brown, 1995) in cross-cultural career assessment.

References

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Matthew A. Diemer, Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University; Paul A. Gore Jr., Department of Educational Psychology, University of Utah. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matthew A. Diemer, Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, 441 Erickson Hall, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1034 (e-mail: diemerm@msu.edu).

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