Abstract
A review of the content of the Journal of Career Assessment was conducted from the journal’s inception (i.e., 1993) through 2011. A total of 545 articles were analyzed for this content analysis. The content analysis was based on content, characteristics of empirical studies, and authorship. In terms of content, the major areas were career assessment, theoretically based articles, and issues related to special populations. Strengths of empirical studies included large sample sizes and ethnically diverse samples, whereas limitations concerned an over reliance on college student participants and not reporting information regarding race or ethnicity of the sample. The content analysis concludes with a list of the 15 most productive scholars who have published in the journal.
The Journal of Career Assessment (JCA) is a premier journal in the field of vocational psychology and a content analysis of this journal could provide insight into the direction of research in field. According to Buboltz, Deemer, and Hoffman (2010), “periodic content analyses of scholarly journals are believed to be important because they provide an index of the extent to which published scholarship reflects the purpose, interests, and values of a given psychological discipline” (p. 368). Scholars have analyzed the content of other career journals. For example, Buboltz, Ebberwein, Watkins, and Savickas (1995) examined the publications in the Journal of Vocational Behavior and The Career Development Quarterly published between 1975 and 1994. Furthermore, two additional content analyses have been conducted on The Career Development Quarterly (Buboltz & Savickas, 1994; Loveland, Buboltz, Schwartz, & Gibson, 2006). However, no thorough content analysis has been conducted of the JCA, which is surprising given its prominence in the field of vocational psychology.
According to the homepage of the JCA (http://jca.sagepub.com/), the “Journal of Career Assessment (JCA) provides methodologically sound, empirically based studies focusing on the process and techniques by which counselors gain understanding of the individual faced with making informed career decisions.” Therefore, the focus of the journal is broader than solely career assessment instruments, and this content analysis is designed to examine the publication trends of the journal from its inception. Not only does this article present an overall summary of content but it also examines trends by analyzing distinct phases within the journal’s evolution. To be precise, we first provide an analysis of the content for the years 1993 through 2011, which is followed by an analysis of the content of equal thirds of the journal’s publications (i.e., 1993 through 1998, 1999 through 2004, 2005 through 2010). Organizing the content in this manner allows the reader to examine changes that have occurred as the journal has matured. We also provide an analysis of the articles published in 2011 to present an indication of the present direction of the journal.
The purpose of this content analysis is 3-fold. First, the purpose is to analyze the content of the articles published between 1993 and 2011 and determine whether the content is consistent with the mission of the journal and as a reflection of inquiry within the field of vocational psychology. Furthermore, the content can also be compared to other content analyses that have been conducted with other career journals (i.e., The Career Development Quarterly and the Journal of Vocational Behavior) with regard to the scope of the content covered. Second, the empirical or research articles were analyzed for methodological characteristics. In particular, we analyzed the type of sample utilized, the size of the sample, the gender makeup of the participants, and the racial or ethnic makeup of the sample. These methodological characteristics were analyzed in order to provide guidance to researchers who are considering submitting manuscripts to JCA, so that they have information regarding the mean characteristics of research studies published in JCA. Third, not only does this article elucidate on the substantive focus of research published in JCA but it also follows the lead of other content analyses (e.g., Buboltz, Deemer, & Hoffman, 2010; Wong, Steinfeldt, Speight, & Hickman, 2010) and identifies leading contributors to the journal. Identifying leading scholars is a common practice in content analyses and it also serves the purpose of informing potential students and other persons interested in mentorship, collaboration, and/or extension of the work of top contributors to the field. We sought to identify the top 15 most productive scholars who have published in JCA.
Method
The population of interest was 545 articles that were published in JCA from 1993 through 2011 (i.e., Volumes 1–19). All articles were coded except for introductions to special issues. A coding manual was developed by the coding team and involved both deductive and inductive procedures. The coding manual was influenced by the aim and scope of JCA and previous content analyses of career-related journals (e.g., Buboltz et al., 1995; Buboltz & Savickas, 1994; Loveland, Buboltz, Schwartz, & Gibson, 2006). An initial set of coding was conducted on randomly selected articles from the full series in order to test the soundness of the content coding categories. Revisions to the coding categories were made based on this initial sampling. All of the articles used in the sampling were later recoded with the full series. The first step in the coding was determining whether the article was part of a special issue as 21 special issues of JCA were published between 1993 and 2011. The second step in the coding was determining if the article was empirical (i.e., involved the analysis of data) versus nonempirical. If the article was empirical, then the coding team determined whether it was quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. The third step involved the determination of content categories that were primarily based on previous content analyses and other reviews of career literature (e.g., Fouad, 2007), which are as follows:
Career assessment. As stated in the journal, career assessment covers the various techniques, test, inventories, rating scales, interview schedules, surveys, and direct observational methods used in scientifically based practice and research to provide an improved understanding of career decision making.
Theoretically based. Articles in which the discussion of theory was paramount to the content of the article. Subcategories were trait factor, Minnesota theory of work adjustment, Holland, career construction, Super, Gottfredson, self-efficacy and social cognitive career theory, cognitive information processing, and other.
Career development. Discussions or studies of the career developmental processes (e.g., career maturity) and/or influences on career development. Subcategories specified the developmental level (i.e., elementary, middle school, high school, college, adults, or not otherwise specified).
Career decision-making process. Articles in which the influences on or measure of career decision making or indecision were paramount.
Career counseling. The focus was on either the process or outcome of career counseling or career interventions.
Reciprocal work and nonwork relationships. Discussions or studies of the work–family interface.
Ethics. Articles in which the major focus was on ethics in career assessment or career counseling.
Special populations. The focus of the article concerned career-related factors and one of the following populations: Gender (subcategories of women and men), Racial or ethnic minorities, Socioeconomic status, Sexual orientation, International populations.
Job search. Discussions or studies of clients seeking employment.
Other. Articles that could not be classified into one of the above categories.
The content analysis was conducted by cross-classifying the articles into 10 content categories and 15 subcategories. Cross-classification of articles was used because many of the articles could fit into more than one category. For example, an article that focused on verifying Holland’s theory with Chinese participants would be classified as Theory, Holland and Special populations, International. In order to keep the classifications meaningful, we adopted the procedures used by Blancher, Buboltz, and Soper (2010) and limited the number of cross-classifications to two. Therefore, the total number of content classifications (i.e., 867) is greater than the number of articles (i.e., 545).
After all empirical and nonempirical articles were analyzed for content, further analysis was conducted on the empirical articles. Each empirical article was classified for methodological characteristics: (a) sample used (e.g., college students, working adults), (b) total number of participants, (c) gender composition of the sample, and (d) ethnic composition of the sample (i.e., percentage of Whites).
The rankings of authorship were computed using a weighted system that was devised by Howard, Cole, and Maxwell (1987), which is a common method used in other content analyses. In this system, credit for authorship per article is set to a value of 1. Hence, a single authored article would receive a single unit credit of 1. For articles with two authors, the first author received a credit of .60 and the second author received a credit of .40. In articles with three authors, the first author received a credit of .45, the second author received a credit of .32, and the third received a credit of .21. For four authored articles, the credits earned were .42, .28, .18, and .12, respectively. For five authored articles, the credits earned were .38, .26, .17, .11, and .08. For articles with more than five authors, the proportional credit for authorship was calculated based on the same system.
The coding was accomplished by a four member team with two coders independently analyzing each article. The coding team was comprised of a faculty member in a counseling psychology program with expertise in vocational psychology, two doctoral students in counseling psychology, and a master’s student in counseling. All coders had taken coursework related to vocational psychology. The initial agreement among the two coders was 89%, which indicates substantial interrater reliability. Any disagreements between coders were rectified by consensus among the entire coding team.
Results
During the analysis period, which covered from the inception of the JCA (i.e., 1993) through Volume 19 (i.e., 2011), there were 545 articles published. Table 1 presents the frequency of articles that were classified as either empirical or nonempirical. As the table reflects, there has been an increase in the percentage of empirical articles published from 1993 to 1998 (i.e., 48.26%) to the percentage published between 2005 and 2010 (i.e., 64.71%). As Table 1 also indicates, the majority of empirical articles are primarily quantitative in nature with only a total of eight articles (2.2%) involving qualitative methodologies and nine articles involving mixed methods (2.4%). Table 1 also reflects that a total of 162 articles were published in special issues of the journal and a listing of the special issues is included in Table 2. Closer examination of the number of articles published in special issues indicates a decrease from 1993 to 1998, when there were 67 articles, from 2005 to 2010, when there were 36 articles. A total of 33 (20.73%) of the 162 special issue articles published from 1993 to 2011 were empirical.
Article type sorted by time period.
List of Title of Special Issues.
Note: The year, volume, and issue number are shown.
Table 3 presents the frequency and percentages of articles classified in the major content areas. In terms of classification of all articles, the most prevalent category was career assessment, which constituted 32.18% of the total articles. Career assessment was also the most prevalent classification for the periods of 1993–1998 (41.54%), 1999–2004 (35.91%), 2005–2010 (32.96%), and 2011 (26.42%). The second most prevalent content category was theoretically based articles, which comprised 25.49% of all articles in JCA. Theoretically based articles were further coded for specific theories, such as Holland, Super, and Gottfredson (see Table 3). Because of the similarity of self-efficacy theory and social cognitive career theory, these theoretical classifications were combined and this category made up the most frequent theoretical classification. The second most commonly categorized theory was Holland. Interestingly, two theories (i.e., trait factor and Gottfredson) had only one article related to these theories and both of those articles were published between 1993 and 1998.
Categorization by Major Content Areas.
Note. TWA= Theory of Work Adjustment; SCCT= Social Cognitive Career Theory; CIP= Cognitive Information Processing; NOS=Not Otherwise Specified.
As Table 3 also reflects, the third most frequent content area in JCA concerned issues related to special population, which constitute 14.68% of the total number of classifications. Once again, this content area was subdivided to provide more specific information regarding the special population predominantly discussed in the article. The most frequently coded special population concerned articles related to racial/ethnic minorities with 46 total classifications, which was followed by articles that addressed gender with 39 classifications. Articles related to gender were also coded if the interest was primarily related to women or men, and 26 articles addressed issues concerning women whereas only one article focused specifically on men. Another special population of interest concerned international populations, which increased from 1 article in 1993 to 1998 to 14 articles from 2005 to 2010. Other special populations coded concerned socioeconomic status and sexual orientation, which were less often the focus of articles (see Table 3).
Table 4 contains the analysis of the type of participants in the empirical or research articles. College students constituted the most common sample in JCA empirical articles and college students were the participants in 44.38% of the empirical articles. The second most common sample category was mixed (22.74%) indicating that the sample included more than one of the coded categories. An example of a mixed sample is one that included both middle school and high school students. If an article had two separate studies that involved two different samples, then the sample was coded mixed if the samples were from drawn from different age levels. The third most common type of participants was high school students (12.60%), which was followed closely by working adults (10.14%). Interestingly, no empirical study published between 1993 and 2011 involved a sample of only retired individuals.
Frequencies of Sample Ages for Empirical Articles.
Table 5 also includes results of the analyses of empirical or research articles. The average sample size for all empirical studies published in JCA was 1528.27; however, the mean sample sizes varied by year with an average of 441.20 for 1993–1998, 2,631.29 for 1999–2004, 1,419.64 for 2005–2010, and 387.09 for 2011. The mean sample sizes for 1999–2004 was influenced by an outlier of 231,854, and the mean for 2005–2010 was affected by an outlier of 87,293. As can be seen from Table 5, most empirical studies reported the gender makeup of the sample (90.22%). The average sample within JCA empirical articles tended to be composed of more females (59%) as compared to males (41%). On average, race was reported in 54.75% of the articles and the percentage increased from 1993 to 1998 (43.37%) to 2005 to2010 (64.54%).
Demographic Diversity of Empirical Articles.
A total of 781 authors contributed to JCA between 1993 and 2011. Table 6 contains the list of the top 15 most productive scholars with their weighted contributions and ranks. As can be seen from Table 6, the most productive scholar is Nancy E. Betz whose weighted contribution score (17.85) is more than twice the size of the second most productive scholar, Nadya A. Fouad (7.79).
Author Contributions to the Journal of Career Assessment.
Discussion
JCA has published a healthy 545 articles from its inception through 2011. In terms of trends over the years, there was a steady increase in the number of empirical articles published and a decrease in the number of articles published related to special issues (see Table 1). The special issues, however, addressed a wide range of topics related to vocational psychology, and, in our estimation, are one of the strengths of the journal as they facilitate in-depth exploration of relevant topics. It should be noted that there have been 21 special issues published since 1993, which have addressed various topics. Among the special issues, special populations seemed to be a theme, with two issues being devoted entirely to career assessment of women. Additionally, multiculturalism and racial and ethnic minority issues were emphasized directly or were interwoven with other special topics. This seems to represent a significant movement within the field of vocational psychology toward multicultural awareness, which is also reflected in the increasing racial diversity among samples in JCA. A surprising exception to the special issues related to multicultural topics is the lack of a special issue concerning gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT) clients. Another interesting trend in terms of special issues concerned a focus on technology, namely the Internet and computers. With the rise of the Internet and rapid progression of computer technology, this trend reflects the journals responsiveness to these needs.
Of the empirical articles published in JCA, the majority were quantitative with an increase in the number of qualitative and mixed methods articles being published between 2005 and 2010. According to Ponterotto (2002), qualitative research has for a long time taken a back seat to quantitative research. Nevertheless, in a content analysis of qualitative articles published between 1997 and 2002 in four major counseling-related journals, Berrios and Luca (2006) found that the majority of articles published (65%) had an empirical basis. Of those empirically based articles, however, only 8% were related to career topics. Researchers might consider submitting more qualitative studies to JCA particularly as qualitative methodologies are particularly well suited to research with multicultural populations and diverse groups due to their ability to allow the researcher to closely examine participants’ worldviews and perspectives at a level of depth not usually evident with quantitative methods (Ponterotto, 2002).
Central to the mission of JCA is career assessment and this content analysis reflects that the journal has stayed true to its namesake with 32.18% of the content categorizations being directly related to career assessment. It does appear that researchers are sending more assessment-related manuscripts to JCA as compared to The Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) in which Loveland et al. (2006) found that only 7.7% of the articles published in CDQ between 1993 and 2003 concerned assessment. Moreover, in an earlier content analysis of both The Career Development Quarterly and the Journal of Vocational Behavior (JVB), Buboltz et al. (1995) found that assessment only accounted for 18.0% of the articles in JVB and 9.2% of the articles in CDQ. This may indicate that JCA is meeting a special niche within the market by its strong focus on career assessment.
The mission of JCA, however, is broader than career assessment and the cross-classifying procedure allows readers to examine other content trends within career assessment. For example, many of the articles addressed validation of theoretical constructs using career assessments. Of the theories being validated, self-efficacy and social cognitive career theory was analyzed the most with Holland’s theory being researched almost as frequently. As documented by Fouad (2007), support for Holland theory has been demonstrated over many years, but this content analysis establishes that there is a substantial and growing interest in self-efficacy and social cognitive career theory.
Consistent with an increasingly diverse society, there were a significant number of articles related to special populations. As noted in the coding manual, the special population categorization was used when the article had a substantive focus on a particular population. This focus extended beyond the makeup of the sample used for empirical studies. Within the broad category of special populations, there was particular interest in racial and ethnic minorities. This is also consistent with Loveland et al.’s (2006) finding in CDQ in which a growing interest in multicultural and diversity issues was also found. In terms of frequency, the second focus within special populations concerned issues of gender and gender differences within career assessment. It should be noted, however, that while a number of articles focused on women’s career issues, only one article focused specifically on men’s career issues. This finding is consistent with Fouad and Kantamneni (2008) who found that women’s career development has been closely examined for the past three decades, whereas research related to men’s career development is still in its infancy. Consistent with the findings of Nilsson et al. (2007), we also found an increasing number of international career articles being published over time. This content analysis also documents areas where there is a need for an increase in research as little research was published in JCA in areas such as those pertaining to socioeconomic status and sexual orientation. We project that there will be more research related to marginalized populations, such as those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, given the writings and research of some vocational psychologists (e.g., Blustein, 2006; Fouad & Kantamneni, 2008; Heppner & Scott, 2004). Concerning sexual orientation, researchers have proposed numerous areas relevant to vocational psychology in which further examination of these populations could benefit the field, including interventions, assessment, training, workplace discrimination, and the validation and/or modification of existing theoretical constructs (Chung, 2003; Schneider, 2010).
The top coded categories were career assessment, theories, and special populations, making up 32.18%, 25.49%, and 14.68% of the total classifications, respectively; career decision making constituted slightly less of the classifications with 8.42%. Career decision making included articles in which influences on or measures of career decision making or indecision were paramount. Many of these articles concerned the development of new measures of career decision making, whereas other articles addressed the psychometric qualities of existing instruments such as the Career Decision-Making Self-efficacy Scale or the Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire.
Although we found a substantial number of articles related to career assessment, theories, and special population, we found very few articles related to job search and ethics. Whereas, some authors may not submit articles related to job search to JCA thinking that it is solely related to career assessment, we were disturbed by the lack of articles related to ethics. This category was included in this content analysis because there was a special issue related to ethics and we expected that other articles might also address this important topic. As most of the articles related to ethics were contained in the special issue, it may be time for this journal to have another special issue that addresses this pertinent topic.
Another area with a dearth of articles concerned career counseling, and we would like to reiterate Whiston and Rahardja’s (2008) call for additional research related to career counseling. A fourth area that had a surprisingly low number of articles concerned career development, which involved discussions or studies of the career developmental processes including measures of career maturity. Interestingly, more articles addressed the career development of high school students than of college students. The lack of articles on career development may also reflect a differentiation between JCA that focuses more on career assessment and CDQ that contains a significant proportion of articles that address issues of career development (Buboltz & Savickas, 1994; Loveland et al., 2006).
In addition, we found that a high percentage (i.e., 44.38%) of the empirical studies published in JCA had college student samples. Although there were studies where a college population seemed legitimate, there were also times where the sample seemed to be one of convenience. The sample category with the second highest percentage (i.e., 22.74%) of studies concerned mixed samples, which is problematic as this category involved multiple age groups which weakens the generalizability of the results. Another limitation of the research published in JCA was the lack of any study that sampled retired individuals. With the growing aging population in the United States (Administration on Aging, 2011), researchers should consider vocationally related studies with retired individuals.
The average sample size of empirical articles published in JCA from 1993 to 2011 was 1,528.27, which seems substantial. This average was influenced by some outliers, but it appears that JCA tends to include studies with large sample sizes. Articles in JCA also appear to predominantly include information on gender makeup of the sample with 90.22% of the articles including information on gender. Concerning the gender makeup of the samples, the samples consistently tended to include more females than males with 59% of the participants being female and 41% being male.
Researchers who published in JCA, however, were not as consistent in reporting the racial or ethnic makeup of the sample as they were in reporting gender. This was particularly accurate in the early days of the journal (i.e., 1993–1998) when only 43.37% of the articles contained information on the racial or ethnic makeup of the sample. Researchers submitting manuscripts to JCA would be well advised to report detailed demographic information regarding their samples of participants. It should be noted that when race or ethnicity was reported, samples within JCA exhibited a substantial degree of diversity. On average, a sample was 66% White or Caucasian; however, the percentage of White participants decreased from 1993 to 1998 (79%) and from 2005 to 2010 (59%). This increase in terms of diversity of sample is encouraging.
The last goal of this content analysis was to identify the 15 top scholars in JCA. We identified this list of scholars to honor their contributions to the journal and also to provide potential graduate students interested in vocational psychology with a list of productive scholars. As previously noted, Dr. Nancy E. Betz had the highest weighted contribution index, which was more than double the index of the next most productive scholar. This content analysis reflects that Dr. Betz is indeed a productive and prolific scholar. Of the most productive scholars, nine are male and six are female.
Limitations
The results of this content analysis should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, the content categories were adapted from other content analyses of career-related journals and other researchers may develop other strategies for analyzing content. For example, other researchers might be interested in the types of career assessment (e.g., interest inventories, abilities assessments) discussed or researched in JCA as career assessment was the most predominant content category. Second, we did not analyze contribution or relative significance of articles in this content analysis. In particular, it would be beneficial to identify those articles published within JCA that have had a significant influence on the field. Third, although we analyzed numerous aspects of the empirical articles published, we did not analyze the data analysis methods used. In our overview of articles, we noticed that researchers used a number of sophisticated statistical procedures in the quantitative articles (e.g., structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling), however, we cannot comment on the statistical methodologies used by scholars publishing in JCA as we did not code for types of analyses. Finally, this content analysis is descriptive in nature and does not attempt to make conclusions about future directions of the journal. We, however, assert that the descriptive nature of this content analysis of JCA does provides insight into the current status of vocational psychology and reflects a vibrant field with in-depth discussion and analysis of various pertinent topics.
Conclusions
This content analysis indicates that between 1993 and 2011, JCA published a robust 545 articles that included a healthy mix of empirical and nonempirical articles. The majority of the articles were empirical and most of these research articles involved quantitative methodologies. In terms of content, many of the articles addressed issues related to career assessment or examined the psychometric properties of career assessments. The second major content area was theoretically based studies or articles indicating that career theories continued to be scrutinized and examined. Another focus of articles within JCA concerned career topics with special populations with many of these articles focusing on racial and ethnic minorities. In addition, many of the samples used by researchers publishing in JCA were diverse as indicated by the comparative low percentage of Whites in the samples. Conversely, researchers continued to predominately use college student samples in empirical articles published in JCA. Although researcher generally reported the gender makeup of the samples in empirical articles, they were less consistent in reporting the racial or ethnic makeup of the participants. Also included in this content analysis is a listing of the 15 scholars who were most productive in publishing in JCA.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.