Abstract
Vocational psychology has long argued that career opportunities differ for individuals from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds. Yet, despite decades of research, are we closer to understanding the role of race and ethnicity in career development? The purpose of this article is to systematically review and critique research on racial/ethnic minorities in vocational psychology since critique of the research, with a particular emphasis on whether research with racial/ethnic minorities is theory-based, incorporates an intersectional framework, focuses on aspects of identity, and examines environmental and societal aspects of career development. We use our conclusions from that review to make a set of recommendations that we hope will stimulate future research.
Vocational psychology has long been concerned about the role of work in creating equity. Parsons (1909) wrote about work as providing opportunities for equal opportunities in the early 20th century, but it was not until the civil rights movement that vocational psychologists began to be concerned about inequity in work and in career choices across racial/ethnic groups. In the 1970s, psychologists began critiquing the field, arguing that vocational psychologists were perpetuating racial inequities in employment in extant career counseling and theories. They asserted that career counselors were not adequately addressing the needs of Black individuals. For example, in an article entitled “Is career counseling for Black people?” career practitioners were exhorted to develop specific career guidance for Black people so that they could secure steady employment and earn better wages (Ford & Ford, 1978). June and Pringle (1977) critiqued career theories as not applicable for Black workers and called for “vocational theories that take into account the special needs of Blacks …, done by Black professionals, since it is doubtful that Whites will be able to do this adequately” (p. 17). Williams (1979) blamed biased tests for the inequities and Smith (1980) blamed poor preparation and exhorted counselors to do a better job of preparing Black youth for the labor force.
Despite these calls for change over four decades ago, the state of vocational research has not improved dramatically, as Flores et al. (2019) noted. They argued that “a radical transformation is needed …to significantly increase empirical knowledge about [racial/ethnic minority] workers” (p. 188). The purpose of this article is to systematically review and critique research on racial/ethnic minorities in vocational psychology since it was reviewed and critiqued by Fouad and Kantamneni in 2008. They argued that multicultural vocational research should move beyond demographic differences to incorporate a focus on racial identity as well incorporating intersecting identities, should be theoretically grounded, and should include environmental and contextual barriers that are unique to people of color. In this article, we first will provide a summary of the racial/ethnic representation in the population and workforce, a brief review of changes in the world of work, followed by a critique of existing vocational research focused on racial/ethnic minorities. We then systematically review research published in the top vocational psychology journals in the past 14 years to examine whether these articles incorporated critical elements of rigorous, strong multicultural research. We conclude the manuscript with a set of recommendations that emerged from our review, a call to action that we hope will stimulate further multicultural research in the field of vocational psychology.
Racial/Ethnic Representation in the Workforce
The US has become significantly more racially and ethnically diverse, with 60.1% identifying as White, 13.4% identifying as Black, 1.3 % identifying as American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5.9% identifying as Asian or Pacific Islander, and 18.5% identifying as Hispanic in 2015 (Census Bureau, 2020). However, not all of those individuals are in the work force yet, as the growth is due in part to larger families of children not old enough to work. Thus, while slightly less than 61% identify as White, 77% of the labor force identifies as White, while the other racial and ethnic groups are more representative of their proportion of the population: 13% of the labor force identifies as Black, 6% as Asian, 18% as Hispanic, and 1% as American Indian or Alaskan Native. Unemployment, however, is not equally distributed among racial/ethnic lines, and this was exacerbated by the pandemic of 2020–21, with all groups showing dramatic increases in unemployment. In April, 2020, the unemployment rate for 14.1%, 16.7%, 18.9%, and 14.5% for Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, respectively. Employment had begun to rebound somewhat by 2021, with the unemployment rate at the end of 2021 for American Indians and Alaskan Natives the highest at 11.7%, followed by 11.4% for Blacks, 10.4% for Hispanics, 8.7% for Asians, and 7.3% for Whites (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021).
Moreover, while the US workforce has become more diverse, that racial/ethnic diversity has not been evident in within specific occupations (Byars-Winston et al., 2015). In other words, even though 13% of the work force is Black, and 18% of the workforce is Hispanic, that has not been reflected in the same representation in engineering or medicine. In fact, 3.5% and 9.0% of Electrical engineers are Black and Hispanics, respectively and 8.2% and 6.8% of Physicians are Black and Hispanic, respectively. This unevenness is particularly evident in disparities in earnings in weekly salaries for Hispanic men ($722), Black men ($726), and White men ($1004) earning less than Asian men ($1252). And women earn less than men in each category: Hispanic women ($621), Black women ($631), White women ($825), and Asian women ($965) all earn 77–86% less than their male counterparts (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021b).
Changes In the World of Work
The “world of work changing” has over 92 million hits on Google, and the “future of work” has over 294 million hits. Some of these websites overlap; but clearly, there is a great deal of interest in how the world of work is changing. As the old occupational structures and expectations change, it is possible that the opportunities in work for racial/ethnic minorities will also change. Bersin (2016), writing in Forbes magazine about the Future of Work, notes that all the changes in the workplace have an individual impact, an organizational impact and a societal impact. Some of the changes are structural, such as shifts to greater expectations that the employee will be responsible for their own health care and retirement planning. Others are due to shifts in values, such as a focus on local or carbon-neutral products. Yet others are due to the opportunities that come with technology, such as the user-driven jobs developed by Uber or Lyft. These changes affect how and where individuals will work, how organizations will be structured (and how they recruit workers) and at the societal level, it affects the availability of and preparation for work, which affects schooling and policies such as minimum wage and income inequality.
Consider the changes in the past few years that have significantly shaped work and working: smart phones, contingency work (e.g., Uber), globalization, environmental consciousness, the movement to value local products and services, crowdsourcing for funds to start companies, cloud computing, data security, and digital news as just a few. All of these have significantly changed the types of work that people do—and the opportunities for them to do that work. But, unfortunately, those opportunities are not evenly distributed across all populations. Not everyone has the socioeconomic resources to have access to technology or the internet infrastructure (Vassilakopoulou & Hustad, 2021). Not everyone has access to the financial resources to start a company. Not everyone has the resources to seek technological training to be successful in new jobs. Racial/ethnic minorities continue to be the most affected by the losses of opportunities in the workplace. The pandemic of 2020–2021 also showed that the changes of the world of work affected people of color differently, as they were much more likely to be in occupations that were either shut down or were in occupations considered to be essential (Mongey et al, 2021).
Critique of Existing Research and Reviews
Clearly, the occupational landscape is not even across racial/ethnic groups. Vocational researchers have known that for decades and began to include race and ethnicity in studies in the 1970s and 1980s (as well as gender). Vocational psychologists started to attend more closely to the ways that career counseling and career development was the same, or different, across racial/ethnic groups. In 1992, a symposium at the American Psychological Association focused on aspects of multicultural career counseling: Fouad (1993) on assessment, Swanson (1993) on training, Leong (1993) on practice and Bowman (1993) on interventions. Each presenter called for more research, and Betz (1993) also called for more understanding of within-group differences. Fitzgerald and Betz (1994) continued to exhort the field to do more research and were the first to argue that there was a need to include variables of gender, race/ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation in career research. Chapters on the role of race and ethnicity in career development began to be included in handbooks (e.g., Walsh & Osipow, 1995) and editors began to insist that authors at least report the race and ethnicity of participants, even if it was not the focus of the study.
And yet, nearly 100 years after Parsons first wrote about work as creating equity and over 40 years after Black psychologists called for new theories and practices, are we any closer to really understanding the role of race and ethnicity in career development? Fouad and Byars-Winston (2005) synthesized the research on racial/ethnic differences in career aspirations and expectations and found no differences in career dreams, but differences in what racial/ethnic minority adolescents expect to do. And a decade later, in an examination of racial/ethnic representation in occupations from 1970 to 2010, they also documented that the occupational landscape continues to be remarkably uneven (Byars-Winston et al. 2015). This is not a new conclusion; June and Pringle (1977), Ford and Ford (1978) and Williams (1979) were highlighting this 40 years ago. But it should continue to be a central concern for vocational psychologists, who endeavor to understand the various factors that lead to good decisions for clients. With all the will in the world to make the occupational landscape even, and to help create opportunities for individual clients, we cannot change it if we do not fully understand what contributes to that inequity. We need to understand the factors that facilitate or inhibit career choices for racial/ethnic minorities in the US. We argue that the research in the career choices and career development of racial/ethnic minorities in the US has not helped us materially help clients, and we issue a call to action to improve that research.
We follow Flores et al.’s (2019) call for an expanded research vision for vocational psychologists and scholars. Flores et al. (2019) made seven recommendations for future research, aimed at shaping the future of vocational research. Their far-ranging suggestions for the future are geared towards helping vocational scholars bridge disciplines, create effective interventions, and broaden the impact of their work to improve work outcomes for people of color. They include recommendations for training of future vocational scholars, for educational programs, as well as community interventions, as well as for vocational research on racial/ethnic minorities. As they note, though, “[a]s a field, we must periodically assess progress to determine whether …our research reflects the experiences of our diverse labor force and meets social needs”.
We aim, in this article to provide such an assessment. We systematically reviewed the research in the past 14 years to see how—if at all—prior recommendations for vocational research have been incorporated into that research on people of color. Specifically, we review if vocational research with racial/ethnic minorities has been theory-based, has moved beyond simply examining demographic differences to examine components of racial/ethnic identity, has examined the influence of environmental and societal factors in vocational development, and whether research has incorporated aspects of intersecting identities (e.g., race and gender and/or sexual orientation). We chose these four criteria because they formed the basis of recommendations in recent calls for culturally appropriate research (Fouad & Kantamneni, 2008; 2020). We believe that multicultural vocational research needs to attend to culture in a more holistic, comprehensive, and complex manner that cultural identity, societal/environmental influences and that is intersectional in its investigation of cultural phenomena (Moradi & Grzanka, 2017).
As counseling and vocational psychologists have long argued (e.g., Hoyt & Mallinckrodt, 2012; Sampson et al., 2016), strong research should encompass a theoretical framework. Many of the inclusive vocational theories, such as the Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 2002) and the Psychology of Working Perspective (Duffy et al. 2016), maintain that societal and environmental factors are important in our career decision-making. It is also important that multicultural vocational research goes beyond simply examining differences between racial/ethnic groups but rather examines how a sense of belonging or how individuals identify with their cultural background affects their vocational choices, and in cases of multiple identities, which are most salient to work decisions. Finally, vocational scholars have argued (e.g., Cole, 2009; Fouad & Kantamneni, 2008) that an intersectional perspective is necessary to fully understand how context affects career choices. Hence, we chose to systematically examine research published in the top vocational psychology journals since Fouad and Kantamneni’s 2008Fouad & Kantamneni, 2008 review to examine whether these articles incorporated some of these critical elements of rigorous, strong multicultural research.
Method
Articles Included in Review
Findings
Theory: Of the 186 articles that met our criteria for review, 87 were not based on any career theory. This is concerning because of the role of theory in significantly advancing the field. Schultheiss (2017) notes that “theory-driven research … provides an organized framework from which meaningful questions can be posed, thus reducing the generation of unconnected facts (Karr & Larson, 2005; Meehl, 1978; Strong, 1991).” (p. 167). Understanding how the context of race and ethnicity shape vocational behavior from within theoretical frameworks helps us to understand how those theories need to be modified, adjusted or changed, or conversely, if they do work for different racial/ethnic groups at all. Theory-driven research may also inform practice, helping to ensure that career counseling serves all clients well. In their concluding chapter on a book from the 2016 Society of Vocational Psychology conference on Integrating Theory Research and Practice, Sampson et al. (2016) observed that “Stronger links among theory, research, and practice can help us as a profession make our theory more comprehensive and applicable, our research more informative and relevant, and our practice more effective and supported.” (p.192).
Of the articles based on major career development theories, most (73) were based on the Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, 2013; Lent et al., 1994), ten were grounded in Holland’s theory (Holland, 1997; Nauta, 2013), six were based on the Psychology of Working Theory or Psychology of Working Framework (Blustein, 2006; Duffy et al., 2016), four were based on Super’s theory (Hartung, 2013; Super et al., 1996), two each were based on Career Construction Theory (Savickas, 2013) and the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Swanson & Schneider, 2013), and one was based on Krumboltz’ Social Learning Theory (Krumboltz & Nichols, 1990). It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully explain the constructs, or empirical support, for each of these theories. Readers are referred to Brown and Lent (2020) for more in-depth discussion of each. By far, the majority of theory-based studies used the Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 1994) as a framework but in recent years, we saw more research begin to examine the Psychology of Working theory with racial/ethnic minorities.
Identity: In 1994, Fitzgerald and Betz argued for a better understanding of within-group differences. Individuals in a racial/ethnic group differ in how much they identify with that group, and, as we note in a later section, identities intersect. This is critical in vocational research because some identities will be very salient to some work decisions, while other identities are less salient. Thus, a true understanding of within-group differences or salience of racial identity is lost when merely asking research participants to check a demographic category on a survey (even if they are allowed to choose more than one category). However, only approximately a third (64/186) of the articles included in our final set studied some aspect of identity, helping to uncover within-group differences for various racial/ethnic groups. The most common two aspects of identity studied were acculturation and ethnic identity. Cultural values and perceived social status were the focus of 4 studies each. Black identity, collectivism, and internalized racism were each studied in one study.
Societal/Environmental: Of the 186 articles that met our criteria for review, just over half of the articles (93 articles) examined societal and environmental issues within their research. Almost half of those articles examined perceived barriers and discrimination experienced during the career development process, at college or the workplace, or in the community. Environmental barriers were defined as obstacles that participants experienced in their career development process. The research identified several barriers experienced by racial/ethnic minorities, including discrimination, stereotypes, perceived prejudice, experiences with racism and classism, harassment, and cultural tensions. A smaller subset of the articles examined support systems, climates at work and schools, societal perceptions, immigration issues, and the labor market and government policies. Research over the past 14 years identified multiples supports. These included familial and parental support, peer supports, institutional supports, and educator supports. Much of the research in this area focused on the social supports that can help facilitate the development of traditional versus nontraditional interests and activities in underrepresented student groups.
Intersectionality. Over a third (76) of the articles incorporated an intersectional framework in their research. We chose not to include studies that simply controlled for demographic variables but rather included research that focused on examining how cultural identity variables intersected with one another to impact career development. Most commonly, research focused on examining how race and gender intersected with one another, with 40 of the articles examining this intersection. Less than ten articles examined each of the following intersections: race and social class, geographic region and social class, sexual orientation and gender, and gender and social class. Additional articles examined the intersection of various configurations of intersectionality. Only six articles examined how three dimensions of identity intersected with one another, the most of which focused on the intersections of race, gender, and social class.
Discussion
The previous sections examined how research over the past 14 years has incorporated four separate dimensions (i.e., theory, societal/environmental barriers, intersectionality, and dimensions of identity) in their work. We reviewed the number of studies that incorporated each dimension. In this section, we issue a call to action for research that could potentially move the field of vocational psychology forward in examining career and vocational development for diverse groups of individuals. In our call to action, we echo a few of Flores et al.’s (2019) recommendations for new scholars. They had seven recommendations, including encouraging researchers to use culturally sensitive methodological approaches, assess interventions with people of color, integrate interdisciplinary perspectives into vocational research, strengthen connections to other areas of psychological science, enrich intersectionality in research, do research on structural reforms that aid marginalized populations, and explore the impact of environmental disasters on outcomes in vulnerable communities. We applaud their wide-ranging recommendations and note that our recommendations are guided by the past 14 years of research and are narrower in scope. Our call to action emerged from our review of the extant research in vocational psychology and is grounded in the primary questions related to what is effective in regard to vocational interventions, for whom and in which circumstances. We argue that we need both the long-range view of Flores et al.’s (2019) recommendations as well as the near-term changes to really begin to understand how vocational psychology can contribute to greater equity in the workplace.
Theory-Driven Research
We need more research that is theory-driven and advances our understanding of how vocational theories can be applied to diverse groups of individuals. Stanley Strong wrote in 1991 that scientific progress in the field of counseling psychology is dependent on the application of theory building, which involves repeatedly testing theories that incorporate a wide range of phenomena (Strong, 1991). More recently, Sampson and colleagues (2016) noted that stronger links between research, theory, and practice are needed to help make vocational theories more comprehensive and applicable to diverse groups of people. It is important that research with diverse racial/ethnic groups incorporate a theoretical perspective. Without such research, it is difficult to decipher whether we can apply vocational theories to diverse groups of individuals or if new theories are needed. In addition, because the vocational theories we examined have direct intervention implications, when studies are not theoretically grounded, we lose the opportunity to understand if theory-based interventions work across populations. Only slightly over half of the vocational research on racial/ethnic minorities was grounded in a theoretical framework. Much of the multicultural vocational research has emerged using Social Cognitive Career Theory, focusing on how contextual factors influence the development of interests, goals, and actions. More research is needed as there is still a great deal that we do not know about how culture influences career choices. For example, more research examining the central tenets of the Psychology of Working Theory is needed with diverse populations, although some studies have begun to examine its application to racial/ethnic minority adults (e.g., Duffy et al., 2018). We also do not know if current vocational theories encompass the significant environmental and structural barriers that limit the vocational choices of racial/ethnic minorities (Flores, et al., 2019).
Systemic Emphasis: Anti-Racism and Environmental Barriers
Aligned with the anti-racism focus that has emerged over the past several years, we need more research that examines societal and environmental contexts and how these contexts directly and indirectly influence career and vocational decisions. There has been a call to dismantle racism in all sectors of psychology (Andoh, 2021). We contend that vocational psychology is one of the most important areas in which an anti-racist perspective is needed. Anti-racism requires a critical examination of opportunity structures that uphold White supremacy, and many of those opportunity structures are grounded within employment and education opportunities. If vocational psychology research was conducted in a manner that intentionally incorporated an anti-racist philosophy, our research has the potential to inform more effective interventions for racial/ethnic minorities as well as help inform policy to make system-wide changes ().
Outside of explicitly focusing on anti-racist research, approximately half of the articles we reviewed incorporated a societal or environmental framework. Much of what we know about societal influences focuses on perceived barriers and supports that individuals experience as they make academic and work-related choices. To truly understand the contexts in which career decisions are made, we need to incorporate a societal perspective that also examines factors beyond perceived barriers and supports. Future research can investigate access to resources and opportunities, school and workplace climates and cultures, and systemic issues that affect vocational behavior. We need more research that examines how the systems in which workers operate foster and/or suppress workers from minority backgrounds in their vocational development. An exemplar of type of research can be seen in Tebbe et al.’s (2019) research that examined how structural marginalization (lack of protections from legal employment discrimination) was related to work volitions and vocational well-being outcomes. Findings suggested that legal protections from discrimination moderated or buffered the adverse relationship between marginalization and work vocational volition and vocational outcomes. Research similar to Tebbe et al.’s (2019) has the potential to inform policy at both community, state, and federal level, and can help vocational psychologists advocate for these policy changes from a scientific framework. As another example, Fouad et al., (2016) found that women were more likely to stay in engineering positions if the climate was supportive and incivility was not tolerated; their conclusions were that changing the organizational climate needed to be a factor in retaining women in STEM careers. Further research examining policy, legal protections, and climate issues is needed to fully understand how sociopolitical factors play a role in vocational development. We also need more research examining the unique factors that affect immigrants’ vocational development and the opportunity structures to which they have access. It is particularly important that this research examines the development of non-college bound individuals and those currently in the workforce as much of the research over the past 14 years has focused on student populations.
Examining societal and environmental contexts is particularly important for individuals who work in precarious work conditions. Racial/ethnic minorities are more likely to be employed in precarious and insecure work (Oddo et al., 2021). Yet, they are also the most likely to experience workplace discrimination. The COVID pandemic highlighted that precarious workers were considered essential; many of the workers (e.g., grocery store employees) whose employment is precarious in nature, and often underpaid and under-valued, were also the same workers who were deemed essential during the pandemic. More research needs to understand how racial/ethnic minority workers who disproportionately were affected by the COVID pandemic (Kantamneni, 2020) navigate their vocational development.
Intersectional Research
More intersectional research is needed. We argue that, from an individual perspective, which identity, or identities, is salient to an individual at the point of making a work decision is important to understand, especially from the perspective of designing and evaluating interventions. Yet only approximately 1/3 of the extant research in vocational psychology with diverse populations incorporates an intersectional framework. Multiple factors related to diversity determine access to resources and opportunity structures. Moradi and Grzanka (2017) argued for a richer understanding of the intersections of oppression that are faced by people of color and anchored their work in critical feminist analysis, and we agree. We need an explicit understanding of how intersecting identities affect individuals’ work decisions. Those decisions will be limited by the marginalization that is due to sexism, racism, heterosexism, ableism (to mention a few) and these may intersect, as is proposed in the Psychology of Working Theory (Duffy et al., 2016). To move us forward beyond simply examining singular aspects of identity, we need to attempt to understand these cumulative effects. How do internal and external factors related to intersectional identities result in overrepresentation and underrepresentation in certain fields and for certain work decisions? Overrepresentation and underrepresentation in and of itself is not necessarily bad; however, when intersecting aspects of our identities result in differential access to opportunity structures, the result is individuals in better paying, more privileged occupations and others in less privileged under-compensated positions. This further segregates those who may possess multiple marginalized identities from accessing meaningful, stable, and safe work. Conducting studies that are more intersectional in nature will result in more complex research findings that examine within-group differences and that also can have a meaningful impact on how we can intervene at both individual and systematic levels.
Identity-Focused Research
More research is needed that goes beyond simply examining differences between minority groups. We need to unpack the issues of various minority group memberships and examine how identifying with various groups affects career and work-related decisions. How does a strong ethnic identity affect the types of work individuals are interested in or protect/buffer them from experiences of discrimination in workplaces? Additionally, as the United States becomes more diverse and more young people identify as multi-racial, we also need to examine how multi-racial identities affect vocational development and work decisions. This is particularly important since much of the research conducted thus far has examined between-group differences and has focused predominantly on how members of racial/ethnic groups make choices rather than examining the effects of identifying strongly with, or not identifying with, those groups effects vocational development. Research is beginning to show that ethnic identification can play an important mediating role in academic and vocational development, and we need to continue this line of research to more fully understand how identification with multiple aspects of identity is related to vocational development. This would also allow for more complex vocational research that can have a meaningful impact on career counseling practice and the development of career interventions. This also argues against adopting the all-too-common practice of lumping all minorities in a study together to compare them to a White group. Systematic Review and Coding of Vocational Research.
Research Examining Systemic Factors
Finally, we noted earlier that we cannot change the uneven occupational landscape to create greater equity if we do not understand the factors that create that unevenness. Individual’s work decisions are influenced by a complex combination of internal and external factors. Thus, a decision of what work to do begins to be shaped by questions such as “what work do people like me do?”, “what do I like to do?”, “what’s available to me?” and “how do I get to that occupation?” as well as “how do I overcome the barriers to get there?” and “how would that affect my family?” We argue that vocational research can—and should-help understand those factors. Even more, we need to understand them to know how or when to intervene. To understand those factors, we need to design better research studies that go beyond small correlational research that focuses on one group in a college setting. Although those studies serve their purpose, we need to work towards developing systemic longitudinal research of multiple groups across many settings. We argue that it is particularly important to identify, and know how to intervene in, what influences individuals to foreclose on some occupations. In an ideal world, we would have the funding to conduct such a study, but more realistically, this is likely to come together under the auspices of many researchers. While acknowledging the role of individual studies in an individual’s research career, we call for researchers to come together to identify a set of variables that will be included in every study. If every study included the same set of vocational variables that cross many theoretical frameworks, we would be able to gain further understanding of the nomological network of those vocational variables. If every study included some agreed-upon measure of racial identity, we would have a better understanding of the salience of racial identity in vocational outcomes. We would also encourage the pooling of resources to develop a strong longitudinal study that could attract federal funding to help understand some of the factors that influence the foreclosure of work choices.
Conclusion
The occupational landscape in the United State continues to be uneven with racial/ethnic minorities disproportionally having higher unemployment rates, lower weekly incomes, and employed in less prestigious and lucrative careers (Byars-Winston et al., 2015). We need to understand those factors at play that encourage or inhibit vocational development for racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. In this paper, we systematically reviewed research on the career development of racial/ethnic minorities during the past 14 years to see whether recommendations for strong multicultural research were incorporated into that research. We found that research has incorporated some recommendations but there is also much room for growth in our multicultural vocational research. It is our hope that this manuscript will help encourage vocational research grounded in theory, examines how culture is incorporated into identity, explores systemic and societal influences, and incorporates an intersectional perspective. We acknowledge the complexity of factors that are needed to gain a better understanding of how race and ethnicity intersect with many other variables to affect individuals’ work decisions. And, while we advocate for more theory-based research, we also acknowledge that perhaps a completely new theory may be needed to best capture the unique factors that influence the work decisions of racial/ethnic minorities. Our hope is that this call to action stimulates vocational psychologists to think more complexly about how we conduct meaningful and culturally relevant research. By further understanding how cultural factors play a role in the vocational development of racial/ethnic minorities, we can build interventions and advocate for policy changes that could potentially result in a more equal occupational landscape in the future.
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.
