Perception of Career Barriers: a new instrument
Paulo Cardoso
Department of Psychology - University of Évora
J. Ferreira Marques
Faculty of Psychology and Education - University of Lisbon
Poster comunication presented at the meeting of International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance, September 2007, Padova, Italy.
Abstract
Psychometric data of the Inventário de Percepção de Barreiras da Carreira-Revisto (IPBC-R: Portuguese acronym for Perception of Career Barriers Inventory- Revised) are presented. This instrument is based on social-cognitive conceptualization of the career barriers process (Swanson, Daniels & Tokar, 1996). Developed for Portuguese
adolescents includes 74 items grouped in 11 scales. The IPBC was tested on Portuguese students: 488 from grade 9 and 517 from grade 12. The scales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Discriminant validity was evidenced through a factorial structure differentiated from other measures. The IPBC-R scales results show significant correlations to gender, degree of vocational goals definition and self-efficacy expectation beliefs in career roles, supporting the criterion-related validity. Factor analysis of the scales suggests that the IPBC-R is a generalized measure of career barriers perception. Finally, implications of results and need for future studies are discussed.
Introduction
Based on social-cognitive conceptualization on the perception of barriers process (Lent, Brown & Hackett,1994; 2000; Swanson, Daniels. & Tokar, 1996; Swanson &
Woitke,1997) and methodologically on the construction of the Career Barriers Inventory- Revised (Swanson et al., 1996), Inventário de Percepção de Barreiras da Carreira (IPBC: Portuguese acronym for Perception of Career Barriers Inventory) assesses the perception of career barriers in Portuguese adolescents. The analysis of the results obtained through two researches, with the original version (Cardoso & Ferreira Marques, 2001; 2005), allowed the revised version, which is analysed in this paper. The IPBC revision involved: a) to delete items that for psychometric or content reasons revealed themselves inadequate; b) to improve the content of some items and c) to reorganize scales (Cardoso, 2006). The IPBC-R scales were organized according two criteria: adding to the same scale items saturating in the same factor in both studies and distributing the remaining items among the content relevant scales. The IPBC-R is made up of 74 items randomly distributed, 37 adapted from CBI-R. The set of items reflect barriers concerning three moments of the career A – choosing post-secondary studies, B – School to work transition, and C – Working life. They are organised into 11 scales: General Discrimination (3 items; e.g., "Being discriminated in job access due to my age”), Sexual Discrimination (7 items; e.g. "Experiencing sex discrimination in hiring for a job"), Ethnic Discrimination (5 items; e.g. "Experiencing racial/ethnic
discrimination in school"), Lack of Support (10 items; e.g., "Not having vocational counseling available when I have to make my career decisions”), Health (5 items; e.g.,
"Having physical handicap or health problems thwarting my career options”), Role
schedule”), Restriction of Opportunities (4 items; e.g., "The employment opportunities in my educational area are not promising”), Indecision (6 items; e.g., "Frequently
having difficulties in taking decisions"), Inadequate Training (6 items; e.g., "Not having grades high enough to be accepted in the course of my choice”), Lack of Confidence (7 items; e.g., "Having difficulties in the adaptation to new situations”), and Lack of Interest (6 items; e.g. "Disliking my study area”). Within each scale, scores were computed by summing the responses and then dividing by the total number of items. Students were asked to indicate on a 7- point scale (1 = “It’s not and will never be a barrier for me” to 7 = “It will completely hinder”) the degree of difficulty of each barrier in their career development.
The purpose of this research was to analyse the psychometric characteristics of the IPBC-R concerning its factorial structure, reliability and validity.
Method Participants
Participants included 1005 Portuguese adolescents, 583 girls and 422 boys with age ranging from 13 to 23 years (M = 16, SD = . 86). Among them 488 attended grade 9 and 517 were from grade 12. Self-reported ethnicity was the following: 962 white Portuguese and 43 black Afro-Portuguese.
Measures
Demographic information. Participants reported on a brief questionnaire: age, gender, ethnicity, schooling, nationality and the occupation of their parents. The
variables school failure, level of academic aspiration and level of career goals definition were also added, each assessed by a single item. School failure was measured through
alternative answers: never failed, failed one year, failed two years, failed more than two years. The second one describes the level of learning aspiration, through the alternative answers: I wish to begin working after grade 9, after grade 12, after a college degree of 3 years or after a college degree of 4-5 years. The third item evaluates level of goals definition. In this case, the youngsters should indicate, using a five point scale, to what extent they have established goals related to the type of occupation they intend to have when completing their education (from 1 = “Never thought about it” to 5 = “I have my objectives defined and I know how to reach them").
Perception of career barriers was measured using the 74-item of the IPBC-R and Self-efficacy using the Self-Efficacy Beliefs Related Career Roles Inventory (ICARPC: Vale 1997). This measure assesses expectations concerning self-efficacy in the five career roles, as conceptualized by Super (1980).
Role Salience - was measured using the Participation and Commitment scales of the Salience Inventory (Nevill & Super, 1986), Portuguese version (Ferreira Marques & Miranda, 1995).
Career Planning was measured using the Portuguese version (Ferreira Marques & Caeiro, 1981) of the Career Development Inventory planning scales (CDI:Super, Thompson, Lindeman, Jordaan & Myers, 1979).
Results Internal characteristics of the IPBC-R
Estimates of α ranged from .78 to .92, with a median reliability of .85 and test-retest reliability correlations (four weeks interval) ranged from .72 to .81, with a median reliability of .78 (see table 1).
All the 74 items had their highest correlation with the scale to which they were assigned, revealing good convergent and discriminant validity.
Table 1
Characteristics of the 11 IPBC-R scales
Scales Number of items M SD α Test retest 1. General Discrimination 2. Sexual Discrimination 3. Ethnic Discrimination 4. Lack of Support 5. Health 6. Role Conflict 7. Restriction of opportunities 8. Indecision 9. Inadequate training 10. Lack of confidence 11. Lack of interest 3 7 5 10 5 15 4 6 6 7 6 2.46 2.48 2.45 2.50 2.76 2.87 3.07 2.82 3.03 2.50 2.76 1.50 1.25 1.45 1.07 1.47 1.20 1.35 1.24 1.50 1.24 1.41 .78 .85 .86 .85 .84 .92 .79 .83 .87 .86 .84 .72 .78 .75 .81 .78 .80 .72 .80 .77 .85 .79
Scales intercorrelations were moderate to high, ranging from .47 to .85, with a median correlation of .71 (see table 2).
An item-level factor analysis of the IPBC-R was undertaken. In accordance to the previous IPBC research (Cardoso & Ferreira Marques, 2001; 2005), three criteria were used to determine the number of factors to be extracted for the final factor solution: eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (Kaiser criterion), Cattell's scree test, and the meaning of the solution. Item factor loading cutoff was set at .40. The factor solution was orthogonally rotated to the varimax criterion to examine which solution would best explain the correlations among the observed variables. A 7-factor solution, explaining 56% of the variance, was retained. The factors were named according to the scales and include: 1) Role Conflict; 2) Indecision/Restriction of Opportunities; 3) Inadequate
Training/Lack of Confidence/Lack of Support/Lack of Interest; 4) Discrimination; 5) Inadequate Training; 6) Lack of Confidence/Lack of Interest/Indecision; 7) Role Conflict/Lack of Support. A scale-level factor analysis revealed one factor explaining 61,9% of the variance.
Table 2
Itercorrelations of the 11 IPBC-R scales
Scales 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. General Discrimination - .75 .73 .69 .67 .72 .63 .47 .65 .66 .64 2. Sexual Discrimination - .85 .74 .75 .75 .68 .52 .69 .65 .65 3. Ethnic Discrimination - .73 .74 .71 .67 .48 .68 .66 .65 4. Lack of Support - .72 .78 .74 .66 .75 .80 .74 5. Health - .76 .69 .53 .74 .69 .73 6. Role Conflict - .70 .55 .72 .72 .73 7. Restriction of opportunities - .63 .75 .69 .69 8. Indecision - .67 .73 .66 9. Inadequate Training - .78 .78 10. Lack of Confidence - .82 11. Lack of interest -
IPBC-R relation to other variables
Mean scores of girls are higher than those of boys in all IPBC-R scales. With regard to gender differences, in the grade 9, a follow-up univariate ANOVAs yielded a significant effect in the scale of Sexual Discrimination, F(1, 486) = 17.39, p<0.01, ω =.18. In the grade 12 a significant effect was reveled on two scales: Sexual Discrimination, F(1, 515) = 34.43, p<0.01, ω = .25, and General Discrimination, F(1, 515) = 4.32, p<0.01, ω = .09. With regard to ethnic differences, univariate ANOVAs
yielded a significant effect in the following scales: Ethnic Discrimination, F(1, 1004) = 13.24, p < .01, ω = ., General Discrimination, F(1, 1004) = 4.29, p < .05, ω = . In all IPBC scales mean scores of African ethnic students are higher than those of Euro-Portuguese students. In both grades, adolescents with a low level of career goals definition obtained significantly higher mean scores than the more decided in the Indecision scale, F(4, 483) = 17.25, p<0.01, ω = .34 e , F(4, 512) = 15.22, p<0.01, ω = .31. The mean scores rise from grade 9 to 12, these differences being significant in the following scales: Restriction of Opportunities, F(1, 1003) = 12,65, p<0.01, ω = .11, Inadequate Training, F(1, 1003) = 5.06, p<0.05, ω = .06, Health, F(1, 1003) = 5.04, p<0.01, ω = .06, and Lack of Support, F(1, 1003) = 5.01, p<0.05, ω = .06.
In the total sample the IPBC-R scales correlate negatively with the ICARPC sub-scales and with the career planning CDI sub-scales. The IPBC-R scales did not show significant relations with the the Participation and Commitment scales of the Salience Inventory. A scale-level factor analysis of the measures revealed discriminant validity through a factorial structure differentiated from other measures.
Conclusion
The results of this investigation demonstrate that the IPBC-R is an instrument with good internal consistency, adequate test-retest reliability. Factor analysis of the scales suggests that the IPBC-R is a generalized measure of career barriers perception. The scale results (group differences and relation with key constructs) are theoretically consistent, supporting the criterion-related and construct validity. The available evidence regarding the IPBC-R presents a promising, yet insufficient, picture. More research with this instrument is important for its psychometric improvement and studying the vocational behaviour of adolescents in Portuguese speaking countries.
References
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