Development and Validation of the Career Development Sentence Completion Test for Elementary School Career Counseling

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop and verify the validity of the Career Development Sentence Completion Test (CDSCT) for elementary school students. Elementary school homeroom teachers or school counselors can use the CDSCT when they want to understand students’ career development and identify individual career concerns. The process of the CDSCT development was completed in four phases. Phases one and two involved formulating the CDSCT design, writing an initial pool of 80 items from questions that the elementary school teachers reported using in career counseling, and reviewing the items for revision and deletion. These steps provided evidence of content-related validity by experts. For the third phase, apilot test was conducted with 10 5th grade students in elementary school to establish face validity. Finally, 23items were selected for CDSCT for elementary school career counseling. In the fourth phase, 57 6th grade students in elementary schools were administered thenewly developed CDSCT and the Career Awareness Scale for elementary school students with the interval of one week between the two tests. The relationship between all four domains of the CDSCT and the Career Awareness Scale was significant verifying that the CDSCT for the elementary school students has convergent validity. The CDSCT is a useful instrument for understanding children’s career development process and as a tool for individual career counseling.