Career counselling for offenders : relationship between work personality, learning style and client intervention preferences

Penney, Randy (2001) Career counselling for offenders : relationship between work personality, learning style and client intervention preferences. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Work dramatically affects the lives of many people, including offenders, as has been substantiated by correctional research indicating a correlation between offender recidivism and employment. Interventions designed to address the career development needs of offenders have traditionally been positivist in design, relying mainly on actuarial approaches, and offered uniformly without consideration to individual preferences. The application of emerging career theory approaches such as constructivism to this target group offers certain benefits not found in conventional career development interventions. A process is proposed that seeks to provide offenders with a choice between two approaches to group career counselling, one that is action-oriented and a second that is grounded in self-reflection. This study focused on the development of an assessment tool that included work personality and learning style in the process of determining the individual's preference for career counselling. This instrument, the Career Counselling Preferences Questionnaire (CCPQ), along with Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS-E) and Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was administered to 60 inmates, parolees, and probationers to investigate these inter-correlations and to determine the validity of the CCPQ in assessing preferences for counselling structure. Four Holland types, Artistic, Investigative, Social and Enterprising, were found to be positively correlated with a "thinking" approach to career intervention. The Social type was found to be additionally correlated with a doing approach. The Realistic Holland type, accounting for the largest portion of the sample, was found to be not significantly correlated with either approach, as was the Conventional type. In addition, all six Holland types produced by the CCPQ were strongly correlated with results of the SDS-E. The CCPQ "thinker" construct was supported with a positive correlation to the LSI Abstract Conceptualization score. These results are discussed as per the potential benefits of a dual approach that creates a space for emerging career counselling approaches such as constructivism in the correctional system. The possible influence of an unmeasured construct, readiness for change, is also discussed. Implications for correctional programming and recommendations for future research are outlined.

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