Evaluation of Career Guidance Programs

This chapter focuses on the evaluation of career guidance programs, which is an important endeavour for practitioners as stakeholders often want information on the effectiveness of career guidance interventions. The authors first examine previous research related to the effects of career guidance programs or interventions with a discussion of the effectiveness of career guidance programs, which modalities are preferable in providing career guidance, which clients benefit from these interventions, and outcome measures that are typically used in the evaluation of career guidance programs. Second, the authors provide a summary of how to conduct an evaluation of a career guidance program. This overview utilizes the six-step process for evaluating career counselling programs proposed by Whiston and Brecheisen (Evaluating the effectiveness of adult career development programs. In: Niles SG (ed) Adult career development: concepts, issues, and practices, 3rd ed. National Career Development Association, Alexandria, pp 367–384, 2002). These six steps are (1) identify the focus of the evaluation; (2) formulate the evaluation design and procedures; (3) determine evaluation or outcome measures; (4) gather information; (5) data analyses and interpretation; and (6) methods for using the information.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Susan C. Whiston, Nancy Goodrich Mitts & Yue Li

1. Susan C. Whiston