Neglected aspects and truncated appraisals in vocational counseling: Interpreting the interest-efficacy association from a broader perspective: Comment on Armstrong and Vogel (2009)

Abstract

Invited commentary on Armstrong and Vogel's (2009) article on interpreting the interest-efficacy association stimulated an appraisal from a broader perspective. Like empirical research, scale development, and theorizing emanating from social cognitive career theory (SCCT), their conclusion about the importance of assessing both interests and self-efficacy in applied settings and speculations about the developmental sequencing of these attributes need to be evaluated in the context of what decades of longitudinal research reveal are critical determinants of educational and vocational choice, performance after choice, and persistence. For our interventions to be effective and our theory development to be meaningful, we must ensure that innovative measures possess incremental validity relative to cognitive abilities and educational-vocational interests, which are already well established as salient predictors of long-term educational-vocational outcomes. Broader historical, philosophical, and scientific perspectives are provided to enhance practice, research, and theory development. These broader perspectives reveal how well-positioned vocational counseling is for further advances if it builds on (rather than neglects) its longstanding tradition of developing a cumulative psychological science.