an occupation. Crites (1969) distinguishes vocational behavior
from other types of behavior by requiring that the stimulus be occu-
pational rather than physical or social. He enjoins researchers to
systematically use the word occupationalto designate stimulus vari-
ables and the word vocationalto denote response variables as, for
example, in occupational informationandvocational choice.Vo c a -
tional psychology’s basic unit of study is vocational behavior. The
developmental perspective on vocational behavior evokes the con-
struct of career.
Careeris the development of vocational behavior over time.
Instead of the stimulus-response (S-R) paradigm for studying voca-
tional behavior, the response-response (R-R) paradigm is used for
studying career and identifying the antecedents of behavioral pat-
terns. Vocational behavior, or response, remains the basic unit of
study, but instead of studying differences in vocational behavior
among individuals, the career perspective concentrates on changes
in vocational behavior by the same individual across time. Voca-
tional development is inferred and career denoted by changes in
vocational behavior observed across three or more points in time—
the minimum required to notice a trend.
Objective Versus Subjective Career
“Life course” is the meaning sociologists inscribe on careerwhen
they define it as a sequence of occupations in the life of an individ-
ual. This sequence can be objectively observed, as well as analyzed
for patterns. Studies that analyze occupational sequences and con-
catenations in careers originated in the research of Davidson and
Anderson (1937) on occupational mobility. A few years later, the
sociologists Form and Miller (1949) coined the term occupational
career patternto denote the sequence and duration of work positions
occupied by an individual—a definition similar to Shartle’s con-
ceptualization of career (Shartle, 1959). He indicated that one’s
career involves stages, including preparation, participation, and
withdrawal from one’s occupation.
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 151