Contextual Barriers and Supports to Employment as Perceived by Counselors: Instrument Revisions

Abstract

As work is important to everyone and affects both satisfaction and well-being, it is important that counseling professionals are able to understand clients in terms of their diverse career needs. A vital portion of career counseling self-efficacy is the ability to first identify barriers and supports to employment. Career counseling can help influence work obtainment and sustainment. Therefore, it is important that counselors are properly trained to fully identify and understand their client’s diverse career needs to achieve the best outcomes. As such, the Contextual Barriers and Supports to Employment as Perceived by Counselors (CBSE-PC) was created. This instrument measures barriers and supports to employment among clients, as perceived by counselors. As with any instrument, validation is important and can be completed through a series of different procedures. Instrument validation procedures ensure that the instrument has good psychometric properties, so that it can be used by counselors in their work with clients. For this instrument, revisions occurred through utilization of exploratory factor analysis principle components analysis. It was hypothesized that a two-factor structure would account for the covariance of the 40 items. The results showed a two-factor solution, resulting in eight factors being eliminated in the revised instrument.