Developing a self-help career resource for international Chinese doctoral students in Australia

Abstract

International Chinese doctoral students to Australia are a growing demographic but little research has examined support for their career decisions. The Journey to the West Guide has been developed as a self-help career resource to support these students’ navigation of international career transitions. Based on interview data from this cohort, a prototype Guide was developed, and feedback was sought from potential users to refine the Guide. This article proposes a four-step process (i.e., Conception, Design, Testing, and Guided Intervention) for developing career resources derived from literature concerning the development of career assessment and intervention. This process served as a framework to analyse the feedback with a view to refining the prototype. Practical implications regarding self-help career resources are discussed.

Keywords

Career resource international career transitions international Chinese students career support doctoral support

Introduction

International students cannot be generalised as a homogenous cohort due to cultural differences, and consequently, research to gain insight about the career decision-making process and support for specific student populations is warranted (Arthur & Nunes, 2014; Wu, 2014). As a demographic, the number of international students from China has grown steadily over the past decade and a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2018) indicated that they accounted for 25% of all international students in OECD member countries in 2016. Australia has been the second most popular destination for international Chinese students (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation Institute for Statistics, 2018). International students include doctoral students and, following the global upward trend in international student intake over the past decade, the proportion of international doctoral students has grown steadily to reach 26% of all doctoral students in OECD member countries in 2016 (OECD, 2018). In Australia, the proportion of international doctoral students grew by about 16% (to 34%) from 2004 to 2016 (OECD, 2018). In Australia in 2015, 7% of all international Chinese students were enrolled in doctoral research (PhD) programmes (Department of Education and Training, 2016).

When crossing national borders, international students undergo an international career transition that involves a cultural adaptation as their identities evolve with changes in their routines, which consequently affects their career development (e.g., Arthur, 2012; Chen, 2008). Over the past decade, research on the career transitions of international PhD students that involve career decision-making and host country transitions has gradually increased (e.g., Roh, 2015; Sakurai, Pyhältö, & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2012; Yang, Volet, & Mansfield, 2018; Zhou, 2015). However, research concerning support for doctoral student decision-making (particularly in the home country) is scant and has not focused exclusively on international Chinese students.

In China, although career guidance has become increasingly common over the last two decades, this growth and the development of the guidance profession has been concentrated in universities and large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (Sun & Yuen, 2012; Zhou, Li, & Gao, 2016). Most of these career services in universities have focused on employment guidance rather than career planning, and as a result, many graduates appear to lack an understanding of career planning and knowledge about the world of work (Sun & Yuen, 2012). In addition, the guidance profession has mostly adopted western career theories, techniques, and tools without sufficient adaptation to the local context, leading to calls for greater contextualisation (e.g., Needham, Cao, & Cao, 2008; Sun & Yuen, 2012). Given the perception of career planning as a western cultural construct, international Chinese students (including PhD students) might not have experienced career guidance in their home country, and thus, might misinterpret its purpose and intent (e.g., Arthur, 2012).

In relation to career support, caution must also be exercised when developing career resources for people from collectivistic cultures such as Chinese people who traditionally value cohesion and subjugate personal desires to group needs in order to avoid conflict (Cheng, Lo, & Chio, 2010; Watson, Duarte, & Glavin, 2005). With increasingly independent decision-making, especially at more advanced educational levels, international Chinese students proactively seek career information in order to negotiate their career decisions with their parents rather than submitting to their parents’ choice (Lee, McMahon, & Watson, 2018a; Lee & Morrish, 2012). In terms of doctoral student decision-making, potential PhD (including international Chinese) students need career advice regarding their prospective decisions. Moreover, studying a PhD abroad requires special consideration in light of the significant time and money invested (Lee, McMahon, & Watson, 2018b). For instance, while the PhD is a specialised qualification that has traditionally led to entry into an academic research career, fewer tenured positions have been available in recent years across many countries and disciplines (e.g., Auriol, Misu, & Freeman, 2013; OECD, 2014). Further, the premium on an overseas education that employers in China once placed on foreign-trained graduates appears to be declining (e.g., Li, 2013).

Aligned with the call for greater contextualisation, the development of career resources should incorporate input from potential users to acknowledge the importance of sociocultural environments, for example, when adapting career assessments for different populations (e.g., Diemer & Gore, 2009; Duarte & Rossier, 2008; Osborn, 2012; Watson et al., 2005). A career resource was developed based on the influences and experiences of international career transitions for international Chinese PhD students based in Australia as well as their preferences for support (Lee et al., 2018a, 2018b). This research resulted in the creation of a prototype career resource, called the Journey to the West Guide, to assist this cohort in navigating international career transitions. The prototype Guide was refined through feedback from its target audience of students as well as from university student support practitioners familiar with student transition experiences. The significance of the research has been in the development of an evidence-based career resource where its content was informed by its potential users.

This article reports on the Guide’s development against recommendations derived from the literature on the development of career assessment and intervention. From the literature review, a four-step process was generated that extrapolates a developmental process for self-help career resources. This four-step process consists of Conception, Design, Testing, and Guided Intervention. Acting as an analytical framework, the four-step process was then used to consider feedback on the prototype Guide’s structure and content with a view to refining it. Finally, the practical implications of developing self-help career resources are discussed.

Developing self-help career resources

Career resources comprise career assessment, career information, and career intervention (e.g., Hooley, Hutchinson, & Watts, 2010; Prince, Most, & Silver, 2016; Sampson & Makela, 2014). Self-help career resources are popular and have increasingly been offered online (e.g., Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Sampson & Osborn, 2015). Two types of self-help resources might support international Chinese PhD students in navigating international career transitions (Lee et al., 2018b). The first supports self-guided decision-making such as computer-guidance systems (e.g., myfuture in Australia, www.myfuture.edu.au; O*NET in the USA, www.onetonline.org) and online assessments (e.g., The Self-Directed Search; www.self-directed-search.com). The second, Internet information, could support the preparation for international transitions to study and work. These resources include English and Chinese language information from websites such as (a) job banks (e.g., FindaPhD, www.findaphd.com); (b) overseas study forums (e.g., Postgrad Forum, www.postgraduateforum.com; TigTag’s international study forum, bbs.tigtag.com/forum.php); (c) blogs run by existing and former students or by university practitioners (e.g., Sina Education’s study abroad blogs, blog.sina.com.cn/lm/edu; The Thesis Whisperer, www.thesiswhisperer.com); and (d) educational agents (e.g., International Student Agent, www.idp.com; Liuxue Web, www.liuxue86.com).

Self-help career resources are advantageous for clients and career services. Clients find them affordable, convenient, and easily accessible at any place and time via user-friendly platforms (Prince et al., 2016; Sampson & Osborn, 2015). Clients who avoid face-to-face services for cultural reasons might also be encouraged to utilise them if career assessment is anonymous (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011). Similarly, such resources are relatively cheap to develop and can automate repetitive tasks such as assessment administration, thus freeing practitioners to concentrate on addressing complex client issues (Prince et al., 2016; Sampson & Osborn, 2015).

Unfortunately, variability exists in the quality of career resources in terms of their rigour in assessment as well as the questionable applicability to different populations arising from poorly translated and potentially misleading or opinion-based information (Osborn, 2012; Sampson & Makela, 2014). Further, the absence of practitioners has been criticised as they are vital in interpreting assessment results, evaluating the quality of resources, and customising resources based on individual client needs (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Prince et al., 2016; Sampson & Osborn, 2015).

Regarding the development of self-help career resources, three sets of authors offer recommendations for developing career assessment that could prove helpful. Gati and Asulin-Peretz (2011) suggested key design features that online self-help career assessment and intervention should have in order to facilitate the decision-making process from exploration until the implementation of career decisions. Similarly, McMahon, Patton, and Watson (2003) detailed the development of a constructivist-influenced qualitative career assessment from conception to testing. Further, Prince et al. (2016) proposed criteria to appraise self-help career assessment such as an adequate consideration of the environmental context of users. Given that the literature about developing self-help career resources for international Chinese PhD students is scarce, the above identified recommendations can be instructional and could be extrapolated into a four-step process: Conception, Design, Testing, and Guided Intervention.

The first step, Conception, describes crafting the career resource’s aims and purposes for a specific audience (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011). First, the career resource should be ‘ground[ed] … in theory’ (McMahon et al., 2003, p. 198) by emphasising that career planning is the process of self-discovery to aid clients in comprehending their environmental context. Gati and Asulin-Peretz (2011) advised further grounding by informing practitioners about the aim, purpose, and expected outcomes of the career resource, as well as its underpinning theory and potential use, including ways to incorporate it into career intervention and sources of practitioner support. Second, the immediate users (i.e., clients) and the wider audience (i.e., practitioners and parents) should be determined so that the career resource can cater for their environmental contexts by considering factors such as age, gender, socio-economic circumstances, geographical location, educational level, and learning disabilities if any (Prince et al., 2016). In short, Conception involves grounding the resource both in theory and in the users’ context.

The second step, Design, relates to developing the career resource so that users can holistically explore their context (McMahon et al., 2003). To achieve realistic representation of users’ contexts, instructions should be written for them, stating the aim, purpose, and expected outcomes (Prince et al., 2016). The resource should differentiate between fact and opinion by suggesting supplementary resources such as website links to occupational information. In addition, timeliness needs to be considered in the sense that sources utilised in the resource should be listed and be up-to-date (Prince et al., 2016). Further, the resource should be presented in a clear, sequential step-by-step manner that is easy to understand, with any scoring instructions explained (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). Information related to the testing process should be documented in a section of the career resource that addresses practitioners and lists details such as the development team, test dates, profile of test samples, and precautions regarding data security (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Prince et al., 2016). In brief, Design involves determining and structuring the content of the resource.

The third step, Testing, involves ensuring the rigour and trustworthiness of the career resource (Prince et al., 2016). This means following established testing procedures if they exist, and administering the resource on different client groups to obtain feedback regarding its relevance and appropriateness (McMahon et al., 2003). Steps should also be taken to address trustworthiness such as bracketing bias and testing the cultural and linguistic validity of translations (Prince et al., 2016). Summarising this step, Testing concerns checking the design with both users and the wider audience.

The fourth step, Guided Intervention, outlines the purpose of the career resource, which is to guide self-discovery and the implementation of decisions (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). In recognising that career planning and development is a lifelong process, and that interdependencies within the user’s context require integration, the career resource should engage the user’s agency (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). Agentic behaviour is promoted by first ensuring a flexible process that accounts for different aspects of users’ lives (e.g., their values, abilities, and interests), and second by assessing their needs and motivating them towards action (i.e., planning their next steps) by providing additional resources and alerting them to seek professional help if required (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Prince et al., 2016). Essentially, Guided Intervention describes facilitating the holistic mapping of the user’s context.

In sum, a process for developing a self-help career resource could be extrapolated from the developmental process of designing career assessment and intervention proposed by three sets of authors (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). This would result in four steps: Conception, Design, Testing, and Guided Intervention. The following section employs this four-step process as a framework to analyse the development of a self-help career resource that supports international career transitions, the Journey to the West Guide.

Developing and refining the Journey to the West Guide

A brief description of the research study provides a background to the development of the Guide. Next, the four-step process is used to analyse the Guide’s development. Participant feedback on the prototype Guide and consequent refinements to the Guide are then reported.

Summary of research study

A research study examined the international career transition experiences of international Chinese PhD students in Australia from pre-sojourn through to preparation for transition to work, in order to develop appropriate career support (Lee et al., 2018a, 2018b). The study initially examined the influences and experiences of transitions. After obtaining institutional ethics approval, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 international Chinese PhD students regarding their experiences of career decision-making and support. Using thematic analysis, three main findings emerged. The first finding was the identification of three overarching themes: Influences of International Career Transitions, Understanding International Career Transition Experiences, and Supporting International Career Transitions. These three overarching themes comprised eight themes with 17 constituent sub-themes. The second finding was that, by representing international career transitions along a timeline, the themes could be arranged chronologically into four stages of transitions: (a) considering a PhD and doing it abroad, (b) preparing for overseas PhD studies, (c) life in Australia, and (d) thinking about post-PhD careers. The third finding related to career support revealed that most participants emphasised self-reliance in seeking support, and all relied heavily on technology and social networks for support. The findings suggested that a career resource for international Chinese PhD students would need to: (a) support them through the four stages of international career transitions that they experienced as an extended period of continual decision-making and preparation for transitions, (b) utilise technology, and (c) encourage student networking (Lee et al., 2018b).

Based on these initial findings, a career resource (i.e., an initial prototype Guide, which is available on request from the first author) was developed and subsequent feedback was invited from potential users, including both Chinese international students and university student support practitioners to refine the prototype (see Appendix A for the revised Guide). Below, the Guide’s content, structure, and feedback from the potential users are analysed according to the four steps of the resource development process (i.e., Conception, Design, Testing, and Guided Intervention) and presented in turn, followed by the resulting refinements to the prototype career resource.

Step 1: Conception

Regarding this first step, the career resource was grounded in theory and the clients’ context in order to identify the aim, purpose, expected outcomes, and target audiences (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). The aim of the career resource was to support international Chinese PhD students’ decision-making through their international career transitions. The resource was grounded in constructivist theory through its purpose of structuring the career planning process and supporting meaning-making. Further, the resource was created to assist with the exploration of both self and environmental context. This is consistent with Parsons’ (1909) tripartite model that guides contemporary career guidance where career planning begins with self-discovery. To ground the resource in the clients’ context, the intended audience was first determined. The resource primarily targeted prospective international Chinese PhD students as users to assist them in navigating the four stages identified in the study. An ancillary audience identified was practitioners who interact with these students during decision-making such as international student recruiters and career advisors.

Step 2: Design

Relating to the second step, a structure was created to organise the content after initially considering a suitable name. Named the Journey to the West Guide (in short, ‘the Guide’), the prototype’s title was adapted from a widely recognised Chinese novel (Wu, 1592). The title was a play on the word West because, unlike the novel’s monk who travelled westwards from China to India to retrieve the Buddhist sutras, most participants regarded Australia as the cultural West.

In terms of the structure, the prototype contained four sections, each of which was based on the identified stages of transition. Within each section, there were three elements. The first element was a preamble that supported the self-reliant collection of career information and was consistent with the suggestion to address users (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). The introduction to the prototype stated the aim and purpose of the resource. Each section also began with a preamble to establish the decision-making context for that stage. The second element (called Have I Considered…) consisted of reflection questions and was congruent with grounding the resource in theory (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). Reflection questions highlighted critical decision factors to help users to derive knowledge about self and environment. The third element was a checklist of advice statements (called Do … and Don’t …) that provided advice to illustrate common experiences related to the relevant transition stage. The content for the reflection questions and advice statements was distilled from the sub-themes in the study’s thematic analysis, where each section contained up to four reflection questions and between five to eight advice statements. To ensure comprehensiveness, all sub-themes were mapped to individual sections, and reflection questions or advice statements were written accordingly. Summing up, the prototype Guide represented an evidence-based creation distilled from the inputs of participants who represented the potential primary users. After creating the prototype, it was refined using feedback from the target audiences as discussed in the next step.

Step 3: Testing

The third step involved obtaining feedback about the prototype’s design from the primary users and a wider audience. Addressing this step, email interviews were conducted with international Chinese students who would be familiar with the experiences of the primary users, that is, prospective international Chinese PhD students. Over half of the student participants were previously interviewed regarding their experiences of support, and the remainder were recruited. In addition, a mix of email and face-to-face interviews was conducted with the ancillary audience of university student support practitioners who would be familiar with assisting prospective and enrolled international Chinese PhD students. In total, 21 participants were interviewed; this comprised 14 international Chinese PhD students (including nine participants who had been interviewed previously), two international Chinese non-doctoral students who could potentially consider doctoral research pathways, and five practitioners comprising three international student recruiters and two career advisors.

From the study’s initial finding regarding self-reliance in seeking support, using technology, and encouraging networking (Lee et al., 2018b), four feedback criteria emerged. The first three criteria could be substantiated by the three sets of authors referred to earlier (i.e., Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). These criteria are as follows:

Coherence, which describes how closely the prototype aligned with the transition experiences of the targeted prospective students. This addresses the recommendation to realistically portray clients’ context (Prince et al., 2016).

Comprehensibility, which relates to how easily the prototype can be understood. This is consistent with recommendations to write instructions for clients and practitioners while ensuring that the career resource is appropriately written for the environmental context in which it is used (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016).

Utility, which concerns the perceived usefulness of the prototype in aiding the targeted prospective students to navigate international career transitions. This is congruent with recommendations to focus on the decision-making process and to assess clients’ needs in order to provide relevant resources and support to address these needs (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016).

Dissemination, which is about finding suitable distribution channels that would reach the targeted prospective students. This criterion was not mentioned by the three sets of authors because they focused mainly on the development and evaluation of assessment.

Based on the feedback criteria, an interview protocol containing six questions was devised to seek feedback from potential users. The first three questions were open-ended and addressed: (a) Coherence (i.e., How closely did the four sections represent your experiences? Why or why not?); (b) Comprehensibility (i.e., What was easy (or difficult) to understand? Why?); and (c) Utility (i.e., Would the Guide be useful to prospective Chinese students interested in pursuing PhD studies in Australia? Why or why not?). The next two questions addressed Dissemination using multiple-choice, non-ranked options that enquired about the distribution format (e.g., electronic or paper-based) and marketing channels (e.g., to be marketed in Australia by host universities or in China by educational agencies). The final open-ended question asked for any additional comments or suggestions. The interview protocol was tested on two international Chinese non-doctoral postgraduate students, and minor adjustments were made to simplify the language for Chinese speakers. Further, it was decided that different versions of the protocol needed to be written for practitioners and for non-doctoral postgraduate students, which required adapting the first question to their specific context (e.g., for potential international Chinese PhD students considering studies in Australia, how closely have the four sections represented areas they might need to consider?)

To ensure that the career resource was trustworthy and rigorously tested with diverse audiences (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016), feedback on the prototype was obtained from different participant groups: the primary users (i.e., prospective PhD students as well as non-doctoral postgraduate students who could potentially consider international doctoral research pathways) and a wider audience (i.e., university student support practitioners). Overall, the participant feedback showed that the Guide had met its design objectives. The findings related to each feedback criterion (i.e., Coherence, Comprehensibility, Utility, and Dissemination) are briefly summarised in turn.

Coherence

This criterion referred to the alignment between the transition experiences documented in each stage of the prototype and student experiences, including the influences underlying their career decisions as well as perceptions of the practitioners about these influences and transition experiences. The prototype Guide was designed to depict the influences and typical transition experiences as realistically as possible. The general consensus was that the prototype was closely aligned to the four transition stages identified in the study’s initial findings. The main participant suggestions for refinement of the prototype were to emphasise the key transition experiences by expanding the decision-making context to incorporate more sociocultural influences related to decision-making (e.g., family-related factors such as life partners and young family), and to distinguish between the decision-making processes in the first and last transition stages.

Comprehensibility

This criterion described how easy the resource was to understand, and most student and practitioner participants agreed that it was. The prototype Guide was intended to help users understand the key activities and experiences associated with each stage. It was written in a checklist format and each stage contained: (a) a preamble to set the decision-making context, (b) reflection questions that highlighted key decision-making factors, and (c) advice statements relevant to that transition stage.

Most PhD students and practitioner participants appreciated the role of reflection questions during decision-making as well as the function of the advice statements. The main participant suggestions were to simplify the language to improve communication with the intended audience. This could be achieved through: first, improving readability by removing wordiness (e.g., some advice statements seemed to be duplicated) and awkwardness (e.g., a few advice statements could be re-written to avoid awkward double negative Don’t statements); second, translating the prototype into Chinese which would make it easier for students and their parents to comprehend; and third, to write about cultural differences between China and Australia from the viewpoint of potential students who have yet to experience studying abroad, since users in China would lack a cultural frame of reference with which to understand the decision-making context in Australia.

Utility

This criterion concerned the prototype’s perceived usefulness in assisting potential international Chinese PhD students to navigate international career transitions. Most student and practitioner participants concurred that the prototype Guide was a valuable evidence-based reference tool for potential students to structure their planning. Although the prototype had primarily been written for pre-sojourn, international Chinese PhD students, some student and practitioner participants indicated that it could also help international Chinese PhD students during their studies in Australia and through to post-PhD. The main participant suggestion was to incorporate context-relevant examples to explain the transition processes such as Australian-specific websites relaying relocation information.

Dissemination

This criterion surveyed preferences relating to the best communication medium for reaching the greatest number of prospective students. Most student and practitioner participants concluded that the Guide should be disseminated electronically and promoted in China. In terms of whether the Guide should remain paper based or be converted into an electronic format (e.g., an electronic application or on social media), the electronic option was overwhelmingly preferred. Further, pertaining to whether Australian universities, Chinese universities, or other agencies should promote the Guide, all practitioners insisted that Australian universities should promote it within China. The main participant suggestions focused on marketing techniques that could expand the Guide’s reach: by distributing it in a visually attractive format, and by Australian universities promoting it in China through channels such as Chinese social media and the largest annual Chinese government scholarship fair.

Summarising, the participant feedback reinforced the creation of a career resource in an electronic format that facilitated self-help. The prototype was eventually refined after considering participant suggestions, as detailed later.

Step 4: Guided intervention

In the final step, the career resource should facilitate the holistic mapping of the user’s context (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). In this respect, the prototype Guide deviated from the recommendation regarding practitioner involvement. Self-help career resources have been criticised for the lack of practitioner intervention to address complex career decision-making problems, monitor progress towards actions taken, customise the intervention according to individual client needs, and evaluate the quality of resources (e.g., Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Prince et al., 2016; Sampson & Osborn, 2015). The Guide was never intended to replace the practitioner’s role. First, it was not designed to address complex career decision-making problems or monitor action-taking, but rather to guide primary users (i.e., international Chinese PhD students) towards action during each stage of doctoral decision-making until post-PhD. Second, the process of developing the Guide customised it based on feedback from representatives of the target audiences including practitioners who assessed its quality (i.e., Step 3: Testing). Third, in contrast to the commonly accepted practitioner role of facilitating the interpretation and debriefing process as well as providing career information by directing users to further sources of support (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016), the Guide was intended as a stand-alone career resource.

Justifying the Guide’s intention, the findings revealed an apparent disconnect between student and practitioner participants. While most practitioners wanted the Guide to direct students to seek help from student support services, most student participants preferred to seek help from their social networks which is consistent with previous research on international Chinese students (e.g., Bertram, Poulakis, Elsasser, & Kumar, 2014; Zhou & Todman, 2009). However, many student and practitioner participants suggested incorporating Australian-specific information, which aligns with the recommendation to provide supplementary information for clients to explore further on their own (Prince et al., 2016).

Refinements to the prototype Guide

Arising from the Guide’s developmental process, which included participant feedback and suggestions, the prototype was refined (see Appendix A for the refined Guide). The broad structure remained, comprising four sections with each section containing three elements (i.e., the preamble, the reflection questions, and the advice statements). Minor changes were made to some statements to improve their clarity and reduce wordiness, and three new elements were added. Related to the three original elements, first, the preambles remained because instructions to address the users and practitioners are necessary (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003). Second, the reflection questions (retitled as Consider) also remained as they were grounded in theory and promoted lifelong learning while engaging agency through assisting users to consider the influences affecting career decisions within their self and environmental context (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). Some student and practitioner participants called for a deeper elaboration of certain sociocultural influences they deemed important, which confirmed that the Guide’s exploration process supported a holistic approach towards revealing interrelationships between the self and environmental context (McMahon et al., 2003). As such, the reflection questions were updated to incorporate these sociocultural influences related to international transitions. The third element, the advice statements (retitled as Advice) remained, although these statements were reworded to remove duplication and context-specific examples were incorporated.

Pertaining to additions, the following new elements were added: a section (called Explore) containing website links to relocation and adaptation information was inserted alongside another section (called Further Reading) directing users to supplementary sources of support. The addition of both these sections is consistent with the recommendations to provide additional support resources and direct users to seek help when necessary (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Prince et al., 2016). Further, a blank note-taking section (called My Notes) was added to improve visual presentation. This allows users to note down impressions as they undergo the initial transition stages, which might may prove useful when progressing to more advanced stages. These impressions would help users with sense-making, which is consistent with constructivism, and in assisting users to formulate action plans (McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016).

However, some participant suggestions were beyond the scope of this refinement process. These mostly pertained to Dissemination with the conversion into an electronic format and translation into Chinese, all of which require further investigation and testing on target audiences. Also, related to improving visual attractiveness, the electronic version could leverage on the legacy of the well-liked Journey to the West novel by including cartoon depictions of the novel’s four protagonists (after accounting for any copyright implications) to help users navigate the electronic interface. Summing up, since little evidence has been found to suggest that clients suffer ill effects from using self-help career resources, the Guide is ‘complementing not competing’ (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011, p. 268) with the work of practitioners.

Overall, the present article has extrapolated a four-step process to guide the development of self-help career resources based on recommendations related to designing and developing career assessment and intervention (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016). This four-step process was used to analyse the content, structure, and feedback of the prototype of one such resource for supporting international career transitions, the Journey to the West Guide, with a view to refining it. For the most part, the Guide’s developmental process appears congruent with the recommendations of the four-step process derived from the extant literature. The next phase in developing the refined Guide would involve converting it into an online resource to leverage on the use of technology in self-reliant career exploration and planning (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; Kronholz, 2015).

Discussion and practical implications

The process of developing the Journey to the West Guide yielded a product with inputs derived from an emic sample and refined based on feedback. First, the developmental process allowed the cohort’s cultural context to emerge, as is congruent with constructivism (e.g., Mahoney, 2003), and the process remained broadly aligned with the recommendations for developing career assessment and intervention (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011; McMahon et al., 2003; Prince et al., 2016).

Second, even though the Guide was created from the inputs of international Chinese PhD students, the elements in its design (e.g., the reflection questions and advice statements in Step 2: Design) are reflective of western matching models about knowing oneself, discovering the world of work, and making a wise career decision based on matching both sets of information (e.g., Creager & Deacon, 2012; Savickas, 2007). Potential users subsequently ratified these design elements (in Step 3: Testing). Implementing career support that considers the preferences of international Chinese students transitioning to the West requires checking the applicability of a western concept to a different cultural context and then making suitable adjustments (e.g., Hwang, 2005; Needham et al., 2008). The development of the Journey to the West Guide represents one such attempt at integration.

Third, this article reported the developmental process of a career resource tailored for a specific cohort. Undoubtedly, commonalities in international transition experiences exist among international students from different nationalities and educational levels (Arthur, 2007, 2008). However, the Guide should not be applied wholesale to other cohorts without further investigation and adaptation because it was developed from nuanced findings based on a specific cohort at a specific point in time (Poortman & Schildkamp, 2011). Further research that examines host countries and student cohorts to identify similarities and differences could result in future editions of the Guide that address multiple cohorts.

Pertaining to practical implications, there have been calls in China for career guidance to reflect Chinese sociocultural value systems while keeping pace with the country’s economic advancements (e.g., Needham et al., 2008; Sun & Yuen, 2012; Zhou et al., 2016). For instance, Chinese students have been known to avoid career services in home and host countries, preferring to approach non-career trained yet esteemed mentors such as teachers for career advice, while being influenced by pragmatic considerations such as the ease of finding a job, high pay, or an opportunity to move to the city (Lee et al., 2018a; Needham et al., 2008).

To increase the relevance of career support for international students traversing different cultural contexts, self-help career resources that are made available online have the potential to lend ‘fresh eyes’ (Bright, 2014, p. 30) to fulfil the potential of technology as a facilitator in career services. Several authors have argued for the inclusion of technology in the provision of career services (e.g., Bimrose, Kettunen, & Goddard, 2015; Bright, 2014; Hooley et al., 2010). Well-designed and evidence-based self-help resources such as the Journey to the West Guide that have been developed from the users’ perspective can offer a cost-effective solution to aiding users to explore their selves in their surrounding world, and to independently make decisions and implement career planning (e.g., Kronholz, 2015; Reardon, 2017).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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