The Assessment of Career Status With the Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory

Abstract

The Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CASI; Holland & Gottfredson, 1994) was developed to provide a tool for the assessment of several facets of career status—satisfaction and personal styles and attitudes related to career stability or change, job performance, and career attainment level. The CASI was developed to assess career status directly, rather than by inference from theoretical variables or group membership, by allowing respondents to express their concerns and beliefs in scales that cover a range of personal and situational influences on their lives and their work. The instrument can be scored and interpreted by users, counselor's, or psychologists to provide measures of job satisfaction, work involvement, skill development, dominant style, career worries, interpersonal abuse, family commitment, risk-taking style, and geographical barriers. Counselors use the CASI as a career check-up or screen to identify areas of concern to focus on in counseling, and the instrument has applications in organizational needs assessment and program evaluation and in assessing the outcomes of counseling. Use of the inventory is illustrated, and needed research is recommended.