Career concern and coping as indicators of adult vocational development

Abstract

The validity of the Adult Career Concerns Inventory (ACCI) and the Career Adjustment and Development Inventory (CADI) as measures of adult vocational development was examined by comparing the responses of 124 salespeople to the two inventories and to measures of work adjustment. Both inventories address establishment stage vocational development tasks but the ACCI deals with task concern and the CADI deals with task coping. After transforming the ACCI scores to provide clearly interpretable comparisons to the CADI scores, the results did not support the hypothesized association between establishment stage task concern and coping. The CADI task coping scores did relate as expected to occupational congruence and job satisfaction but the ACCI transformed task concern scores did not. The CADI clearly seems to measure vocational development. In contrast, the ACCI seems to measure concern about issues occasioned by vocational development tasks or changes in work or working conditions, depending upon the respondent's degree of vocational development.