Narrative

I wear three hats as a member of the faculty of the Counseling Psychology Area within the Department of Psychology. All of the positions involve directing something. First, I serve as Area Director of the Counseling Psychology Program. Second, I serve as Co-Director of the Career Counseling and Assessment Clinic (CCAC), and third, I direct the Center for Interest Measurement Research (CIMR). The Counseling Psychology Program responsibilities primarily involve administration. The CCAC responsibilities include research and supervising the coordinator of the clinic and the counselors who see the CCAC clients. The CIMR responsibilities involve research and overseeing 4 to 6 graduate students and 2 to 4 undergraduate students who participate on my research team.

My theoretical orientation for both research and training is heavily oriented towards the empirical tradition of the University of Minnesota Psychology Department and the Minnesota Point of View in counseling psychology which emphasizes individual differences, person-environment fit, and assessment. My research is designed a) to improve existing knowledge about the broad range of topics relevant to the development of interest measures and to career development and career-decision-making, and b) to provide data that are useful in the applied setting. I am co-author of the Strong Interest Inventory and I use the Strong to operationalize the construct of interests in almost all of my basic research. My program of research has focused on test development and scale construction; issues related to criterion sample composition and subject selection; sex differences and sex-fairness in interest measurement; career interests of collegiate women and men student-athletes; changes in interests within occupations as well as within society in general over the last five decades; effectiveness of interest inventories; basic research on the stability of interests and on the structure of vocational interests of ethnic minority populations; the relationship of serendipity to educational and career development; and the relation between vocational interests and personality.

Currently my research team is working on projects in various areas related to vocational psychology. One project involves the development of an instrument to measure leisure interests and the collection of evidence of its construct validity. This project also is gathering evidence of validity for a publicly available measure of vocational interests. Other projects are a) exploring the efficacy of career counseling, b) testing a model of the trait complexes (interactions) of abilities, personality, interests and values, c) exploring narcissism vis a vis estimated and measured abilities, and d) examining the relation of approach motivation to vocational and leisure interests.