Nadya Fouad

• University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

The Academic Persistence Outcome Expectations Scale is a measure of college students’ outcome expectations for remaining (or persisting) in college according to Bandura’s (1986, 1997) theoretical conceptualization of the construct. The two factors represent different types of outcome expectations according to their theorized valance and the propose...

The collective changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic impacting both individual workers and their environment suggest that changes occurred in workers’ person-environment fit. Drawing from the Theory of Work Adjustment and job crafting theory to examine how the pandemic may have shifted workers’ needs and the environmental reinforcers that le...

The career development of women has been a longstanding topic of inquiry in vocational psychology. Two previous major reviews in this area consistently identified that women tend to experience more career barriers than men. This major contribution sought to extend this work by providing a third systematic review of the literature on women’s career...

In the following rejoinder, we respond to Betz, Phillips, Flores, and colleagues’ reactions to Fouad et al.’s major contribution (2023 [this issue]) on women’s career development. Particularly, we respond to comments highlighting the importance of studying individual differences along intersectional lines in explaining vocational behavior. We conte...

The author reflects on her term as editor of the Journal of Vocational Behavior, articulating questions she continues to have about the field. She reviews the changes in the journal, particularly considering the goals she set out to achieve as editor. She gives some tips for authors from the perspective of reading much of over 5000 submissions in t...

This research examines the effects of a class‐level intervention for career indecision variables. A repeated measures intervention study was used to examine the efficacy of a 16‐week career exploration course on decreasing career indecision variables. Results showed significant improvement in lack of readiness, choice/commitment anxiety, and neurot...

This article is the editor's introduction to a special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Vocational Behavior. The theme of the special issue was integrating vocational and organizational psychology. The Editor-in-Chief reviews how the topics were chosen for the special issue, reviews the 9 articles that were invited, and th...

Family influence is a key factor in many aspects of career development; however, very little research has examined the relationship between family and well-being. Drawing on social cognitive career theory, this study examined the influence of the family on college students' academic and overall life satisfaction. The participants were 312 college s...

Student military veterans pursuing higher education present with unique career development needs. To better understand these needs, the authors conducted an exploratory study to examine career transition readiness, career adaptability, academic satisfaction, and satisfaction with life among 134 student military veterans (34 women, 100 men). Results...

Women’s departure or nonentrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions, particularly engineering, has been a lively source of scholarly inquiry for the past three decades. Much of the literature in this area has been with solely female samples of participants, begging the question as to whether or not men and women eith...

This paper contains the text of the Leona Tyler Award address given by the author in San Francisco in August 2018. The author reviews her career, tracing the three strands that have influenced her work: Cultural context, counseling psychology, and the study of work. These three strands are presented individually, then brought together in the metaph...

Ten scholars in vocational psychology identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a 2001 issue of the Journal of Vocational Behavior. This article reviews the state of the field in 2001 and then identifies to what extent the strengths and concerns have changed in the past two decades. While the field continues to have a strong t...

This study examined the specific career‐related behaviors of career adaptability and occupational engagement among student veterans (N = 100). Contrary to expectations, findings showed statistically significant negative correlations between career adaptability resources (control, concern, curiosity, and confidence) and occupational engagement. Mult...

Previous research has highlighted the employment needs of recent college graduates, focusing on the specific challenges members of this group encounter as they transition into the workforce. This study examined graduating seniors (N = 164) during their senior year of college as they transitioned to the workforce, investigating career adaptability a...

Self-care is a critical component and considered a core foundational competency for doctoral students in the field of psychology. It is an ethical imperative to maintain adequate self-care to prevent burnout and negative outcomes to those receiving health-care services. Self-care is also related to the professional values of psychology, specificall...

Objective: In 2002, the American Psychological Association (APA) Council of Representatives approved the “Guidelines for Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice and Organizational Change for Psychologists.” The Guidelines have been downloaded 64,153 times from the APA website from 2007 to 2013, and have been cited nearly 900 times. Th...

The authors review research that has used social cognitive career theory as a frame to investigate factors that may explain science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) choices and work decisions for women and racial–ethnic minorities, as well as barriers to their entry to STEM careers. The research is reviewed by age-groups. Most of th...

College is a significant time for undergraduates to declare majors and choose career paths. For many undergraduates, choosing both a major and a career path is challenging. Among the reasons why undergraduates experience difficulties in this decision-making process, are having too many options, not viewing enough options, and not feeling prepared t...

The author provides a reaction to articles in the major contribution on grant writing for counseling psychologists by Martens et al. and Burrow-Sánchez, Martin, and Imel. The author focuses her comments on three areas: reactions to the articles, her own grant-writing experiences, and additional recommendations.

The current research examined differences between women engineers who persisted in an engineering career versus those who left engineering using a combination of two prominent theories of career change: social cognitive career theory (SCCT, Lent, Brown & Hackett, 1994; 2002) and integrated model of career change (Rhodes & Doering, 1983). The two gr...

This presentation will report the results of Stemming the Tide, a study that investigated factors that contribute to women’s decisions to stay or leave engineering careers. Women are underrepresented in the field of engineering at every level. Most of the research on effective interventions has focused on increasing women’s choice of engineering ma...

This investigation adapts and extends the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by integrating it with central constructs from turnover theory. The extended model proposes that domain specific self-efficacy and outcome expectations predict job satisfaction and organizational commitment — the two key job attitudes that have been established as influ...

Competency-based education (CBE) is a model that guides the educational process toward acquisition of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for effective professional practice in service of the public. Increasingly adopted by medicine and other professions, the CBE model involves establishing competency goals, developing curricula and other e...

This study investigates burnout and work engagement in layoff survivors. Layoff survivors are defined as individuals who remain working at organizations that have recently had layoffs. Job demands (job insecurity and work overload) and job and personal resources (social support, optimism, career adaptability, and career management self-efficacy) ar...

In this study, the question of whether using slightly illusionary, positive attributions of self, control, and meaning (e.g., cognitive adaptation theory), in the face of disconfirmatory evidence, facilitates quality of life in late-stage cancer patients was examined. Eighty late-stage cancer patients (Mean age = 59.7, SD = 12.5; 48.8% male, 51.2%...

This report addresses the strong need for practical applications of the comprehensive Competency Benchmarks document (Fouad et al., 2009) for training in professional psychology. A workgroup extended the efforts of the original Benchmarks Workgroup, creating a condensed, flexible, and practical competencies rating form for use by educators, supervi...

During the past 10 years, professional psychology has embarked on a major effort to reconceptualize its training model, shifting from a focus on the number of hours spent acquiring knowledge or skills to a “culture of competence” that emphasizes demonstrated competence in specific domains of knowledge and skills. The two commentaries in this specia...

Examining vocational interests is a central component of career counseling; yet, little research has investigated structural differences for specific subpopulations or the role of cultural factors on vocational interests. The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of interests, congruence between expressed and measured interests, and th...

This qualitative study examines factors that influence the career decisions of dislocated workers. The research focuses on individuals identified as working class, as this group has been relatively ignored in past research compared to individuals from higher socioeconomic statuses. Participants include 13 individuals (10 females and 3 males) rangin...

Workplace bullying is a significant problem in many adult work settings. Much of the research has been conducted by organizational psychologists. It is important for vocational scholars and practitioners to be knowledgeable about the phenomena of workplace bullying, as they are in a position to contribute to the literature base and to counsel perpe...

This study examined the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and Holland’s Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC) model. It was hypothesized that individuals resembling Social and Enterprising vocational personality types would report higher SWB than those resembling other personality types....

This article presents three studies that provide an in-depth examination of STEM-related supports and barriers. These studies constructed an instrument to identify male and female perceptions of the barriers and supports for pursuing coursework and/or careers in mathematics and sciences domains; to pilot test and refine that instrument; and then to...

Career counselors' multicultural competence has not been widely investigated. In this study, a national sample of 230 career counselors completed an online survey that included measures of career counseling self-efficacy and multicultural counseling competence. Beyond these self-report instruments, counselors responded to open-ended items that requ...

This article describes the development and validation of the Family Influence Scale (FIS). The FIS is designed to assess perceptions of how one’s family of origin influences career and work choices. The purpose of Study 1 was to identify the domains of family influence. A 57-item scale was completed by a sample of 205 college students. Results supp...

Research on group differences in interests has often focused on structural hypotheses and mean-score differences in Holland’s (1997) theory, with comparatively little research on basic interest measures. Group differences in interest profiles were examined using statistical methods for matching individuals with occupations, the C-index, Q correlati...

A “toolkit” for professional psychology to assess student and practitioner competence is presented. This toolkit builds on a growing and long history of competency initiatives in professional psychology, as well as those in other health care disciplines. Each tool is a specific method to assess competence, appropriate to professional psychology. Th...

The Competency Benchmarks document outlines core foundational and functional competencies in professional psychology across three levels of professional development: readiness for practicum, readiness for internship, and readiness for entry to practice. Within each level, the document lists the essential components that comprise the core competenci...

In this reaction to Diemer and Ali's article, “Integrating Social Class Into Vocational Psychology: Theory and Practice Implications,” the authors point out concerns with binary schema of social class, highlight the contribution of social class to the social cognitive career theory, argue for a more nuanced look at ways that work provides social mo...

Although psychologists involved in the training of graduate students understand the importance of responding effectively to exhibited insufficient clinical competence, the extant literature offers little guidance on how best to make decisions during this process. The authors propose an adaptation of the information processing approach to problem so...

This study investigated the influence of two contextual factors, parental involvement and perceived career barriers, on math/science goals. Using social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), a path model was tested to investigate hypothesized relationships between math- and science-related efficacy beliefs (i.e., task and co...

Individuals make choices in, and adjust to, a world of work that is often a moving target. Because work is so central to human functioning, and transitions in and out of work can have major mental health repercussions, the authors argue that applied psychologists in health services need to understand those transitions. This article focuses on the d...

This study used a modified version of consensual qualitative research design to examine how contextual, cultural, and personal variables influence the career choices of a diverse group of 12 Asian Americans. Seven domains of influences on career choices emerged including family, culture, external factors, career goals, role models, work values, and...

Many vocational psychologists advocate addressing career as well as personal concerns in career counseling. However, some clients may have inappropriate expectations toward career counseling and may not be prepared or want to discuss personal issues. This study examined whether perceptions of the career counseling process could be modified with the...

Work is integral to human functioning, and all psychologists need to understand the role of work in people's lives. Understanding factors influencing work choices and helping individuals effectively make career decisions is the focus of vocational psychologists. However, external changes, such as shifts in the economy and labor force, as well as in...

This study examined whether university students were psychologically distressed or had difficulties with career decisions to indicate whether they needed career services, whether they were aware of the services offered by the campus counseling and career services, and finally, whether they had used the services. Findings indicated that students ind...

This article focuses on the construct of outcome expectations. It is argued that the construct has received relatively little attention in the vocational literature. The authors define outcome expectations, trace the precursors to the construct, provide a critique of the operationalization of the construct, and propose recommendations for future re...

This study examined racial/ethnic group differences on an interest inventory at the item level using differential bundle functioning (DBF) analyses. Specifically, responses of males and females from five different racial/ethnic groups (N=3750) on the General Occupational Themes of the Strong were examined. Items were grouped together based on subst...

This study examined evidence for the use of the Strong Interest Inventory with diverse populations, including examination of the structure of interests across five racial/ethnic groups, finding similarity in perceptions of the world of work. The study also studied differences in means for the General Occupational Themes and Basic Interest Scales as...

At the Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology, the Scientific Foundations and Research Competencies Work Group focused on identifying how psychologists practice scientifically. This article presents the subcomponents associated with the core competency of scientific practice. The subcomp...

This article presents an overview of the Houston 2001 National Counseling Psychology Conference. The authors discuss the context for the 4th National Counseling Psychology Conference, documentthe process of decision makingaboutthe conference, andexamine the content of the conference. The authors also examine a unique feature of the conference, the...

Replies to comments published by M. J. Harris (see record 2003-03406-011) and A. Bleske-Rechek and R. M. Webb (see record 2003-03406-012) in reference to the original article by M. E. Kite et al (see record 2001-10045-002), which summarized the findings and recommendations of the Task Force on the Status of Women in Academe. Here Kite et al reply i...

This study was designed to examine the vocational interests among members of the same racial/ethnic group who differ in age, educational level, and professional attainment. Student samples of African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and American Indians ( n=3,637) completing the Strong Interest Inventory (L. W. Har...

In the present study, the authors investigated the academic subject matter domain specificity of the social-cognitive career choice model (R. W. Lent, S. D. Brown, & G. Hackett, 1994). The relationships between self-efficacy, goals, outcome expectations, and interests were examined across the subject areas of art, social science, math/science, and...

This article reviews the characteristics of academic women in psychology. It also details what is known about women's participation in various academic roles and describes their successes in those roles. The article also discusses obstacles to women's success in psychology as a discipline and in academe more broadly. The article concludes with reco...

This article presents the author's perspective about the strengths of vocational psychology, which includes its quantitative foundation, empirical evidence on the career concerns of college students, its theory-driven research, focus on vocational assessment, and its professional organization. Weaknesses of the field include its overemphasis on qua...

This study applied causal modeling techniques to the Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) model of person, contextual, and experiential factors affecting career-related choice behavior. The effects of family context and person input variables on learning experiences, self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, interests, and goals were examined. Data on underg...

In the 21st century, the way we assess career interests will change in response to a revolution in the world of work. The changes in the world of work include information technology, globalization, a change to the service sector, and the increasing diversity in the work force. Clients will need assessment of clusters of interests, skill-sets, value...

This study was designed to investigate the academic-subject-matter domain specificity of self-efficacy, interests, outcome expectations, and goals. Four major subject-matter domains were selected to investigate this issue: math/science, art, social studies, and English. To examine this question, 16 instruments were constructed to measure the 4 conc...

This article describes potential contributions of theories of person-environment fit to understanding of the transition from school to work. The authors review basic assumptions of person-environment fit theories and how the theories can be applied to the school-to-work transition. An earlier version of this article was presented by the senior auth...

Research on Asian American career development has found that Asian Americans' occupational interests are typically predominant in the Investigative and Realistic areas and that they may pursue a limited range of occupations. This study investigates factors that might influence Asian Americans' career choices and tests Lent et al.'s model to investi...

Uses a cross-cultural perspective to report on the work experiences of a Chinese-American woman. Examines the case from the viewpoints of Jessica Chang, her supervisor, and that of her organization as a whole. Lists additional readings in cross-cultural counseling, with a focus in cross-cultural career counseling. (RJM)

Conducted a validity study of the Middle School Self-Efficacy Scale (MSSES) that assesses career-related self efficacy intervention for inner-city Hispanic and Latino students. Specifically, validity evidence was sought for a measure of self-efficacy and outcome expectancy and the effect of math and science career awareness intervention on the Ss'...

This study was designed to obtain validity evidence for the Middle School Self-Efficacy Scale, a measure of self-efficacy, outcome-expectancy and intentions and goals in career decision making or mathematics/science.

This study tested Propositions 1, 3, and 4 of the R. W. Lent, S. D. Brown, and G. Hackett (see record 1994-47157-001) social cognitive model with ethnically diverse middle school students ( N = 380): that an individual's vocational interests are reflective of his or her concurrent self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations, that self-efficacy...

Studied problem-solving skills training among 9th-grade students in a large midwestern high school aimed at reducing behavior problems. The study was planned for 94 Ss and 94 controls, and anger expression was chosen as the training topic. The Ss were divided into 3 groups and received individual, small-group, and classroom training. Problem-solvin...

Career assessment with Latinos/Hispanics in the United States is a topic that is attracting attention among test users and test takers. Latino/Hispanic clients and their counselors are asking if tests administered to them are fair, or useful. Counselors are wondering what effect language proficiency has on test taking, and how culture, socioeconomi...

This article will present data on two studies investigating vocational correlates of attitudes towards work/family balance. The first study was designed to measure the relationship between attitude toward balancing work and family (Gilbert, Dancer, Rossman, & Thorn, 1991), and two variables: college major and vocational aspirations. Two hundred for...

Investigated factors involved in 106 counseling students' endorsement of personal counseling as a graduation requirement. Results show that Ss were self-aware enough to recognize that they had issues to deal with in counseling and that personal concerns might interfere with their effectiveness as counselors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA,...

This study investigated the cross-cultural similarity of vocational interests of students and professional engineers in the United States and Mexico (N = 557). Multiple discriminant function analyses were used to investigate the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory scales that discriminate among the four groups. Results indicate similarity among all...

This study investigated the construct of career maturity in the United States and Israel by assessing attitudes about career decision making. Eight hundred eighty-five U.S. and 537 Israeli 9th- and 12th-grade high school students were given the career maturity Inventory (CMI). Results indicated differences across cultures in career maturity as well...

The authors investigated the feasibility of transferring the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) into another culture. Results are discussed relative to appropriate psychotechnological transfer.

Examined the cross-cultural translation and validation of B. A. Bracken's (1984) Bracken Basic Concept Scale (BBCS), using 32 preschool and primary age bilingual children (mean age 62.4 mo). Analysis was conducted in a counter-balanced format with the English and newly translated Spanish forms to assess the adequacy of the translation. The Spanish...

This study investigated the cross-cultural similarity of vocational interests. Mexican and U.S. male law and engineering students and U.S. male professional engineers and lawyers (N = 814) were tested using the English or validated Spanish form of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII). Multiple discriminant function analyses were used to in...

Administered the English and Spanish forms of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory to 94 bilingual Hispanic high school students (mean age 15.5 yrs) to test the correspondence of interests of Spanish-speaking clients to the structure of interests proposed by J. L. Holland (1973). Both versions produced 6 General Occupational Theme scores (Realist...

The Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) and a Spanish-language version developed through direct and back translation were each administered to 141 bilingual Hispanic high school and community college students. Responses were highly similar on the 2 versions of the inventory, indicating that Ss were expressing the same degree of interest to th...