Career Development Inventory

Career inventories can be separated into two categories, those that measure career choice content and those that measure career choice process. Inventories that deal with career choice content measure an individual's occupational abilities, vocational interests, and work values and then match these characteristics to the requirements, routines, and rewards that characterize a variety of occupations. Inventories that deal with career choice process measure an individual's attitudes toward, beliefs about, and competencies for making educational and vocational decisions as well as coping with vocational development tasks such as securing a job and establishing oneself in an organization. Process-oriented inventories provide a picture illustrating an individual's readiness and resources for career decision making. This picture portrays information regarding attitudes toward planning and exploration as well as knowledge about occupations and competence at decision making.

One popular instrument for measuring readiness and resources for educational and vocational decision making during adolescence is the Career Development Inventory (CDI). The CDI School Form is used with Grades 8 through 12, and the CDI College Form is used with college students.

The CDI is composed of two parts. Part I contains 80 items, takes approximately 40 minutes to complete, and reports scores for four scales: Career Planning (CP), Career Exploration (CE), Decision Making (DM), and Knowledge of the World of Work (WW). CP measures an individual's future orientation with regard to the world of work. Responses indicate the amount of thought an individual has given to future occupational choices and the extent to which an individual has engaged in career planning activities. CE represents the degree to which an individual has made use of quality resources in career planning activities.

DM measures one's ability to apply the principles of rational decision making to educational and vocational choices. Brief scenarios describe individuals in the process of making career decisions. Based on the information given, the respondent must choose the most appropriate solution from a list of possible answers. It is proposed that individuals who can solve the career problems in these scenarios are likely to make wise decisions regarding their own careers. WW assesses one's knowledge regarding specific occupations and ways to attain, establish, and prosper in a job of one's own choosing.

Part II measures Knowledge of Preferred Occupation (PO). It contains 40 items and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. Individuals are prompted to select their preferred occupational group from a list of 20 groups. The questions that follow address the type of work one should expect, educational requirements, values, and interests that are characteristic of individuals employed in that line of work.

The CDI reports three additional scores: Career Development Attitudes, which combines CP and CE; Career Decision Knowledge, which combines DM and WW; and Career Orientation Total, which combines CP, CE, DM, and WW. An online version of the CDI is available free to qualified professionals at http://www.vocopher.com.