Card Sorts

Overview

In this type of assessment, clients typically sort between 30 and 40 cards of various themes or ideas into categories as a way to develop personal or career-related priorities and, as they do so, themes tend to emerge. It is preferable for clients to identify patterns within the sorted categories themselves so that the themes are personally relevant to them. Card sorts are sometimes preferable to more standardized assessments because the information gathered therein is done so informally and through client speech. Therefore, clients are actively engaged in the process of self-awareness. Additionally, through this process counselors can see firsthand how clients organize thoughts and ideas, as the success of the exercise is dependent on the client's ability to engage in the process and recognize and explore patterns or themes. Any set of ideas may be examined through use of a VCS, including career values, occupations or occupational titles, skills, or college majors. Counselors may also create their own collection of items to reflect a particular theme. The exercise of clients sorting and prioritizing the items within the particular category [Page 1422]appears to be critical to the process. In doing so, the client makes decisions about items relative to one another and expresses his or her reasons for doing so. In working with clients, counselors may offer a more structured setting in which, for example, the client generates a list of occupations to explore. Alternately, the card sort exercise may serve as a springboard for discussion, thus providing ample room for dialogue in a less structured setting. In this way, card sorts can be customized to the needs of a particular client.

Research

Leona Tyler was the first to describe the VCS in the literature and to provide empirical evidence for their utility. In relation to vocational inventories, such as the Strong Interest Inventory (Strong) or Self-Directed Search (SDS), research on the VCS has received exponentially less attention. This is likely due to many reasons, but most importantly it is because testing a client's interests or skills using inventories preceded the development of card sorts and because inventories as a whole are considered more “research friendly.” Card sorts most often need to be completed in the presence of a trained counselor, while inventories can be taken away from the counseling setting, scores can be computed electronically, and inventories such as the Strong and SDS have been validated with thousands of individuals across decades of research.

The research that has been completed on the VCS has mostly related card sort outcomes to vocational inventory outcomes. In a recent review of the literature, studies have shown that clients indicate interest in similar occupations whether a VCS or a vocational inventory is used. Thus, according to this limited body of research, card sorts have appeared to be as valid in determining vocational preferences as inventories.

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