Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2008, Page 61

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Tímarit um menntarannsóknir, 5. árgangur 2008
put into building services and making them
available in the educational system and among
adult workers. Recently more demands have
been put on service providers to develop cost
effective practices and evaluate their outcome.
As Brown and Rector (2008) point out, to be
able to provide effective services the nature
of the career problems need to be considered
and the services tailored to individual needs.
Florida State University has developed an
approach that builds on the problems each
client faces in the decision making process.
The model is based on Cognitive Information
Processing theory (CIP) and was developed
along with a counseling approach that can be
used to assist individuals with career problem
solving and decision making. It also includes
a detailed account of how to organize the
services of a career centre. The two main parts
of CIP theory are the pyramid of information
processing domains and the CASVE cycle,
which is a guide to good decision making
(Peterson, Sampson & Reardon, 1991;
Sampson, Reardon, Peterson & Lenz, 2004).
The authors of the CIP approach have
developed an inventory, the Career Thoughts
Inventory (CTI) (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz
Reardon & Saunders, 1996a), based on CIP
theory. The measure is used in career counseling
to assess dysfunctional thoughts related to career
decision making and clients´ readiness to make
career choice. The inventory contains 48 items
that give a total score indicating the extent of
dysfunctional thoughts and also breaks the
results into three subscales, Decision Making
Confusion (DMC), Commitment Anxiety
(CA) and External Conflict (EC) (Sampson,
Peterson, Lenz, Reardon & Saunders, 1996b).
According to CIP theory and its approach the
results of the CTI indicate what services can
best meet the client’s needs in a cost-effective
way for the career centre and with optimal
outcome for the client (Sampson et al., 2004).
In this study the CTI was translated into
Icelandic and the reliability and validity of the
Icelandic translation among university students
was tested. To be able to implement a program
based on CIP theory and develop more effective
services in Iceland it was necassary first to
test the applicability of the Career Thoughts
Inventory in Icelandic culture.
Method
The translation of the CTI into Icelandic
was based on guidelines about translations of
psychological measures (Ægisdóttir, Gerstein
og Çinarbas, 2008). To test the reliability and
the validity of the Icelandic translation of the
CTI the inventory was administered to both a
normative sample of university students and
career counseling clients. The student sample
consisted of 314 university students and the
client sample included 93 clients that had
requested services at the University of Iceland
Student Counseling and Career Center.
Results
The reliability of the CTI and its subscales was
similar to the reliabilites found in the original
US version. The factor structure supporting the
three subscales, DMC, CA and EC, was only
partially replicated with principal component
analysis with both varimax and oblique
rotation. However, the CTI total score and
all three subscale scores were higher among
clients than students, thus indicating that the
Icelandic version differentiates between these
two groups.
Discussion
Results indicate that the CTI can be used to
assess students´ overall dysfunctional thinking
but the factor structure is only partially
replicated in Iceland and is therefore not
completely comparable with the factor structure
in the USA where the measure was originally
developed (Sampson et al., 1996b). This study
has practical implications for the use of CTI
in counseling the Icelandic university student
population. The translated version of the
measure can be used to develop the services
provided based on the CTI results and evalute
the effectiveness of different counseling
approaches. However, the two subscales,
Íslensk þýðing og þáttabygging CTI