WEEK 2 - EMPIRICAL ERA OF CAREER COUNSELING

Week 2 - January 26th

Empirical Era of Career Counseling

Crites (1969) identified three broad overlapping eras to describe the evolution of career and development theory building which are:  Observational, Empirical, and Theoretical.

Name of Theory:  Empirical Era (Crites 2nd era)

Dates:  World War I to the end of World War II (1914 to 1945)

Theorist:  Combine Frank Parsons' vocational guidance and Alfred Binet's intelligence testing

Main Concepts/Ideas: 

Vocational psychology would be identified as a psychological science by merging the streams of Parsons' vocational guidance and Alfred Binet's intelligence testing into a current of aptitude and interest testing.

Numerous tests during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s focused on aptitude, abilities, and interests were developed and used.  In 1927, E.K. Strong published the first edition of what is used today the Strong Interest Inventory, and in the early 1930s the Minnesota Mechanical Ability Tests were published.  During this same period, the Minnesota Employment Stabilization Research Institute at the University of Minnesota was established due partly to a response to the depression that gripped the economy.  This organization conducted numerous research projects and developed many tests.

In 1933, the Wagner-Peyser Act was passed by Congress which created the U.S. Employment Service, and the service surveyed 25,000 employers and 100,000 employees to gather occupational information, develop measures of proficiency and potentiality, study the transferability of skills, and write job descriptions.

World War II saw many psychologists using tests for personnel classification with the major test being used for this purpose was the Army General Classification Test which tested 9 million men.  Problems encountered in selecting and classifying soldiers caused the filed to grow and revise its view of individuals' relationships to work.  In the 1930s this was called the Matching Men to Jobs approach but became known as Trait and Factor theory in the 1940s.

Links to Articles or Videos:  http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/int-history.htm; http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/06/14/documents-that-changed-the-world-alfred-binets-iq-test-1905/