Factor structure and measurement invariance of employment counselors’ use of discretionary power and differences based on gender, training, and experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study contributes to the further development of mandatory employment counseling practice by creating a new measure to describe differences in counselors’ use of discretionary power. The measure categorizes counselors’ acting and thinking into concrete counseling behavior as well as prioritizations of goals and topics for the counseling process. Behavior is specified into participation, appreciation, transparency, directivity, and active conflict resolution. Goals and topics are subdivided into client- and control-orientation. CFA showed an excellent fit of this model on data from 771 German employment counselors. Additional analyses revealed strict measurement invariance for gender, training, and experience, making the presented measure equally applicable for female and male counselors, as well as for counselors with different training and experience backgrounds. Further, latent mean comparisons revealed that gender had no effect on counselors’ use of discretionary power, but better trained counselors rated themselves as less directive compared to more experienced counselors, who also put more emphasis on control-orientated goals and less emphasis on client-orientated topics. The presented measure and results can be used in employment agencies for supervision and training to sensitize employment counselors for their individual use of discretionary power and enable future research on best practice in employment counseling.