Abstract
Despite concerns regarding its relevance, the person-environment fit approach to career counselling assessment remains a popular one in the South African context. This may be due to a lack of awareness of, or regard for, these concerns among career counselling assessment practitioners working in South Africa. This narrative review thus aimed to summarise literature regarding the relevance of the person-environment fit approach to career counselling assessment in South Africa and alternatives to this approach. Keywords were used to search for, and identify, literature on several electronic databases. Additional literature was identified through citations and citing publications in the initial literature obtained. Given the nature of a narrative review, no inclusion, exclusion or appraisal criteria were specified. Based on the review of literature, the following themes and subthemes were identified: questionable relevance of the person-environment approach (inadequate reliability and validity of tests in the South African context, Western-based theoretical underpinnings, language and socio-economic bias, and inadequate norms for the South African context) and alternative directions of career counselling assessment in this context (development of emic tests, qualitative assessment approaches and integrated assessment approaches). The findings suggest that an integrated quantitative-qualitative approach to career counselling assessment may be a feasible alternative to the person-environment fit approach. However, further research and development regarding the person-environment fit approach and other career counselling assessment approaches is required in order to move towards a more relevant career counselling assessment practice in South Africa.
Highlights
The person-environment fit approach to career counselling assessment is widely used in the South African context (Watson & McMahon, 2013)
In contrast to systematic reviews, which aim to provide a comprehensive synthesis of knowledge on a topic, narrative reviews do not entail a structured approach to the search and selection of literature to include and review (Grant & Booth, 2009; Greenhalgh, Thorne, & Malterud, 2018)
Given the person-environment fit approach’s reliance on primarily Eurocentric, outdated psychometric tests whose psychometric properties and cross-cultural applicability are concerning in the South African context, the relevance of this approach to career counselling assessment in this context is questionable
Summary
The person-environment fit approach to career counselling assessment is widely used in the South African context (Watson & McMahon, 2013). Findings from such a summation may contribute to knowledge of the relevance of this approach in South Africa and potentially facilitate the awareness, development and practice of a more contextually relevant assessment practice in this context This narrative review aimed to describe literature regarding the relevance of the person-environment fit approach to career counselling assessment in South Africa, with a focus on literature pertaining to specific aptitude, personality and interest tests that are commonly used in this context, namely, the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) which assesses aptitude in terms of potential to obtain an ability with a given degree of training, the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) which measures personality in terms of 16 primary personal traits and the relationship between these through five underlying second-order factors, and the Self-Directed Search (SDS) which assesses interests using six broad domains of interest as per Holland’s theory of vocational personalities and work environment (Du Toit & De Bruin, 2002; Foxcroft, Paterson, Le Roux, & Herbst, 2004; Van Eeden, Taylor, & Prinsloo, 2013). The objectives of this review are (1) to identify, summarise and describe literature regarding the psychometric properties and use of the DAT, 16PF and SDS for career counselling assessment in the South African context, (2) to appraise the http://www.ajopa.org
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