Assessing and changing career decision-making self-efficacy expectations

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Abstract
Evidence that a significant percentage of career decision-makers may be helped only partially by traditional information-oriented approaches suggests that career counselors pay increased attention to the personal-emotional barriers which deter many individuals from making and enacting sound career plans. Self-efficacy theory seems to be especially promising as a guide for changing negative expectations, as it offers the counselor a set of specific strategies for assessing low expectations and for treating them. Social-cognitive theory provides a firm research-based framework from which the counselor can encourage clients to gather new efficacy information. Using the basic social-cognitive strategies, counseling can proceed to facilitate the changing of clients' cognitive schemata, by means of the counselor's encouraging clients to consider new evidence and to try further tests of old beliefs. Counselors are encouraged to continue to explore methods for assessing and treating low career decision-making self-efficacy expectations. A self-efficacy-based approach lends itself to the requirement for focused, short-term intervention which is typical of many settings in which career counseling is practiced, while it also ensures that important personal-emotional issues in career decision-making are addressed.

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