Career Choice and Development

their career options long before they begin sorting through their
possibilities in adolescence. By adolescence, most individuals may
therefore be dealing only with the remnants of vocational choice.
Counseling with the circumscription and compromise theory there-
fore focuses attention on career options that young people reject
as well as on options they say they prefer. The aim is to ascertain
whether individuals have unthinkingly eliminated good options at
earlier ages and to expose the bases for their rejection (sextype and
so on).
The second problem to which the theory draws attention is that
many young people unnecessarily compromise, or give up, their
most-preferred choices by failing to come to grips with reality
(availability of jobs and training, lack of required skills, and so on),
either by ignoring that reality or not dealing with it effectively.
Counseling with circumscription and compromise theory therefore
focuses on how to encourage “constructive realism,” that is, realism
not only about the constraints on choice (job requirements and
availability) but about the ways to expand choice (actions one can
take to become more competitive for a preferred job).
These strategies are pursued in a five-step diagnostic sequence
for determining whether individuals have unnecessarily circum-
scribed or compromised their options. The five steps, or sequence of
diagnostic questions, which are more fully described elsewhere
(Gottfredson, 1986b, 1996), are as follows:

1. Is the counselee able to name one or more occupational
   alternatives?


2. Are the counselee’s interests and abilities adequate for the
   occupation(s) chosen?


3. Is the counselee satisfied with the alternatives he or she has
   identified?


4. Has the counselee unnecessarily restricted his or her
   alternatives?


5. Is the counselee aware of opportunities and realistic about
   obstacles for implementing the chosen occupation?

134 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT