- career development is part of the continuing learning and growing;
- one’s career essentially depends on how one envisages it;
- the qualitative side of one’s career is decisively influenced by the way one
learns the decision-making and problem-solving mechanisms.
The applied part of the CIP model refers to supporting clients in solving their
career-related problems and decision-making.
Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) is an evaluation and intervention instrument used in
counselling based on the theoretical development of “cognitive information processing”
(CIP). “Career thoughts” means the result of mental activity including: behaviours,
beliefs, feelings, plans and strategies oriented to solving problems and making decisions
concerning one’s career.
In this context, we consider that the notion of career must be understood as a
combination of multiple roles (child, student, parent, spouse, employee, citizen,
retiree, etc.) performed – successively or simultaneously – throughout one’s lifetime.
The instrument aims to link the process of evaluation to the collection of measures clients
may use in their own interest: information, training, decision-making, career
development, etc. In other words, CTI is an instrument of evaluation and making one
aware of his/her personal of making realistic career-related decisions and at the same time
a source of learning.
Clients who have been identified with problems and personal dysfunctions in
occupational decision-making will require increased and more specialized assistance from
the counsellors, as well as individual involvement in a learning process centred on
understanding the world of work, the realm of social relations, defining and solving
personal career-related problems.
By career-related “dysfunctional thoughts” the authors understand the results of thinking
expressed in hypotheses, suppositions, attitudes, beliefs, feelings, plans or strategies
connected to career problem solving or decision-making that can perturb or block the
personal development.
CTI can also identify the results of career-oriented educational programmes (formal or
non-formal) and the impact of various types of information, counselling and guidance
interventions.
The administration of the inventory (individual, including self-administration or in group)
begins with filling out the client identification data: name, date of taking the test, age,
gender, academic status, employment status, accomplished levels of formal education,
etc.
“Career Thoughts Inventory ” has 48 items, all formulated as negative statements,
requiring an answer of the type: