Culture and assessment: nomothetic and idiographic considerations.

This article summarizes presentations on career assessment delivered at the 2007 joint symposium of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Society for Vocational Psychology, and National Career Development Association. Notable among the many themes that emerged from this discussion group were the concepts of culture and assessment and the mutually beneficial outcomes of idiographic and nomothetic approaches to career assessment. Brief reviews of each presentation highlight these recurring themes.

At the 2007 joint international symposium held by the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG), Society for Vocational Psychology (SVP), and National Career Development Association (NCDA), participants gathered in discussion groups to address particular themes. In Group 5, "Procedures, Suggestions, and Instruments for Assessment," participants thoughtfully discussed the issues, tensions, and best practices related to career assessment from an international perspective. This discussion group echoed some themes from the 2004 IAEVG-NCDA joint conference adeptly summarized by Watson, Duarte, and Glavin (2005), such as the issues involved in cross-cultural assessment. Given the multinational focus of this group and its presenters, this emphasis was not surprising.

Capturing the range of issues raised by these eight presenters is challenging; however, the tension between nomothetic and idiographic considerations in career assessment was a shared theme in these presentations. Although every presentation contained both elements, each presentation emphasized either a nomothetic or an idiographic perspective regarding the issue of career assessment. To guide the discussion of these presentations, we have categorized each presentation as either nomothetic or idiographic, a rough categorization that frames our review of these thought-provoking offerings.

Defining Nomothetic and Tdiographic Perspectives

We categorize each presentation as nomothetic or idiographic by its correspondence to one or the other of these two perspectives in the literature. Presentations categorized as nomothetic were those that emphasized making inferences and predictions based on groups of individuals and for which career development constructs were defined a priori and assumed to be relatively stable and consistent across cultural groups. In the process of career assessment from this perspective, a construct or domain of interest is defined and is then operationalized and measured by a given set of test items. The cultural validity of a given instrument is then established by that instrument's psychometric properties with a given population (Blustein & Ellis, 2000). These presentations emphasized a classic approach to career assessment, were framed in a positivistic or postpositivistic set of epistemological and ontological assumptions, and were generally more quantitative in nature.

Generally, idiographic assessment places more emphasis on the individual. Presentations categorized as idiographic assessed career development constructs on the basis of participants' subjective constructions. These presentations emphasized a postmodern approach to career assessment, were framed in a constructivist or social constructionist set of epistemological and ontological assumptions, and were generally more qualitative in nature. In this approach, semistructured interview questions or open-ended prompts, rather than a standard set of items, are used to collaboratively assess an individual's career development and its associated influences (e.g., cultural, familial) based on that individual's subjective perspective. Rather than trying to assess more universal career development constructs across different groups, idiographic approaches emphasize understanding the "local" differences in career development in cultural groups. These presentations also emphasized the cultural and social milieu of career development both in the process of career assessment and in establishing what Leong and Brown (1995) would label the cultural specificity of assessment instruments in a given cultural context.

Nomothetic Presentations

Robbins (2007) explored the unique and additive value of cognitive and personality assessment in predicting work and education outcomes. The assessment of internal traits served as the foreground of this presentation, with external factors such as school effects and social capital in the background. Focusing on the U.S. context, Robbins reviewed research to suggest that what he called "g" (i.e., general mental ability) was a better predictor of training outcomes and work performance than were personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness and emotional stability). However, previous research has suggested that both achievement test scores and personality variables appear to have unique and additive effects on U.S. college students' retention and academic achievement (see Robbins, Allen, Casillas, Peterson, & Le, 2006). This presentation emphasized the identification of internal constructs that may be predictive of educational and work outcomes in the United States and de-emphasized the cultural context and local characteristics of those individuals.

Rounds (2007) examined the cultural validity in other countries of Holland's model of vocational interests, suggesting that Holland's model may not describe the pattern of interests in other countries (Rounds & Tracey, 1996). Rounds reviewed research suggesting that Holland's model was a poor representation of Chinese respondents' interests and only a partial representation of Icelandic respondents' vocational interests. For example, Rounds argued that the prestige of occupations confounded the assessment of vocational interests in China, suggesting that, in this context, prestige may play a stronger role in the formation of vocational interests than it does in the United States. Using a nomothetic methodological approach, Rounds came to a more ideographic conclusion--interest structures are more likely to be local, and their assessment should perhaps be grounded in specific cultural norms and variables (Leong & Brown, 1995).

Zogmaister and Arcuri (2007) discussed a nomothetic strategy to facilitate the fit of persons to work environments, drawing on the notion of self-regulation strategies. Rooted in social psychology, these include promotion (to find the resources) and prevention (to avoid barriers) self-regulation strategies that individuals prefer to accomplish goals (e.g., Brodscholl, Kober, & Higgins, 2006). Although these self-regulation strategies may be either stable traits or situational states, Zogmaister and Arcuri argued that persons who predominantly use promotion strategics tend to be more abstract, creative, and adventurous, whereas those who predominantly use prevention strategies tend to be more focused, concrete, and conservative. In turn, individuals' preferred self-regulation strategy can be used to match individuals to occupational environments that are either promotion or prevention oriented. For example, individuals who predominantly use prevention strategies may prefer detail-oriented and predictable work environments.

Saggino (2007) explored psychometric and translational issues in cross-cultural career assessment and provided a very detailed overview of technical considerations in the translation of instruments. This thoughtful presentation addressed the difficulty in establishing the cultural validity of measures and whether a measure developed in one culture may or may not be valid in another. Furthermore, cultural validity may be confounded by response characteristics of participants in a new cultural context, which Leong and Brown (1995) labeled culturally specific characteristics. Although nomothetic criteria, such as factorial invari-ance, can be used to assess the cultural equivalence of instruments, idiographic factors, such as linguistic issues, also affect cultural validity. For example, Saggino noted that the word you has three forms in Italian, a local nuance that may greatly affect the appropriate translation and use of career assessments in Italy. These and other considerations highlighted the difficulties in teasing out issues related to distinguishing cultural validity (how valid an instrument is in another cultural context) from cultural specificity (the degree to which culturally specific variables affect the assessment process) in cross-cultural career assessment (Leong & Brown, 1995).

Idiographic Presentations

McMahon (2007) discussed the development and use of the My System of Career Influences (MSCI), a qualitative career assessment that is grounded in systems theory (Patton & McMahon, 2006). MSCI is a contextualized and collaborative approach that involves clients responding to open-ended prompts to gain an understanding of their systemic resources and the constraints on their career development. From an MSCI perspective, the counselor's role is to collaboratively help clients generate action plans and empower them to author their own career narratives. The focus in this approach is to help clients understand systemic factors in their life and how they may self-author their career narrative with an understanding h these influences.

Pouyaud (2007) discussed the Activities System Inventory (ISA), a more idiographic assessment tool designed to help counselors understand the dynamic interplay of activities and responsibilities in an individual's life. Pouyaud noted that fluidity in professional identity and occupations is increasingly common in France, and the more dynamic ISA model was developed to help counselors understand this fluidity and its influences on career development in the French context. From a constructivist perspective, the ISA helps individuals construct meaning from the activities in their life (professional, familial, personal, and social) and cope with the stressors of labor market fluidity.