individual half of D. Super's (D Su...

individual half of D. Super's (D Super M Savickas, & C Super 1996) theoretical propositions that relate to abilities have been operationalized into a psychometric instrument, the Ability Explorer (T Harrington & J Harrington, 1996) Interpretations illustrate in what way D. Super's career development theoretical universals can be implemented in career counseling.

**********

This is an article about abilities and their importance and use in career counseling. In spring of 2002 career professionals had an opportunity to examine the part that abilities play in career increase with the U.S. Department of Labor's release of its aptitude/ability measures as part of the O*NET occupational information hypothesis (U.S. Department of Labor, application and Training Administration, 2000). O*NET replaced the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (U Department of Labor, 1991) However, the main focus in this article is the Ability Explorer (AE; Harrington & Harrington, 1996) a psychometric device for career counseling designs that operationalizes 7 of the 14 propositions constituting Super's career progress to maturity theory (Super, Savickas, & Super 1996) solely portions of the theoretical propositions that relate to abilities are addressed. The specific propositions used, with illustrated applications, are listed later in the Interpretation section.

Osipow (1994 p 219) identified Holland's theory, social learning theory, developmental theory, and work adjustment theory as four of the five foundational career theories. However, vocational scholars conceit that all of these theories, leaving out the work adjustment theory, despiseed the concept of ability in career progressive growth theory (Savickas, 1994). Inspection of the four theory descriptions in Career Choice and exhibition (Brown, Brooks, & Associates, 1996) also reveals that three of the theories have psychometric devices that play central parts in implementing of the theories: Holland's (1970) Self-Directed Search, social learning theory in the Careers Belief Inventory (Krumboltz 1988) and work adjustment theory in the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967) and in the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (Weiss, Dawis, & Lofquist, 1975) However, no psychometric instrument was cited that overspreads Super's comprehensive theory.

The Salience Inventory (Nevill & Super 1986a) and the Values Inventory (Nevill & Super 1986b) pertinent to specific issues in Super's theory are mentioned, as well as the C-DAC (an acronym for Career disclosure Assessment and Counseling; Osborne, Brown Niles, & Miner, 1997) archetype "The C-DAC model uses originates from life-span, life-space theory to add to the trait and factor model's attention to abilities and interests" (Super et al., 1996 p 150) Although the C-DAC archetype views dealing with self-concept in a segmental and developmental way, the assessments used to implement the design focused more on late adolescents and young adults (Osborne et al., 1997) However, several of the C-DAC instruments (eg the Career growth Inventory and the Adult Career regards Inventory) are now out of print.

The intent of this article is to attempt again to interchange Super's (Super et al., 1996) popular theory into practice, specifically focusing forward abilities and the translation of abilities and self-concept into occupational language to help identify educational and career goals. The reason for the focus forward ability is the belief, declareed in Savickas's (1994) observation, that "ability is the integrative institute for much of the stop of psychology" (p. 238). The AE's constituents focus on development, self-concept, and learning orientations and forward using the most common methodology in career practice--the matching of personal characteristics with occupations.

Instrumentation

The AE uses a newer self-report methodology than do designs that were developed over a quarter of a centenary ago (i.e., the Self-Directed Search [SDS] Holland, 1970 and the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making body [CDM], Harrington & O'Shea, 1974) For example, SD respondent self-estimate each of 12 abilities simply designated by the agency of name (e.g., clerical ability) forward a 7-point rating scale (1 = gentle 5 = average, and 7 = high). In a regularity that was developed later, the CDM defines the meaning of the abilities and asks respondent to cull 4, from a list of 14 of their best abilities (eg "clerical ability--running business machines, collecting information in someone or by telephone, keeping correct records, typing"). The AE uses a just discovered methodology and asks individuals to rate for what cause good they would be at doing something if they were given a chance from a list of 140 items and in what way well they can do an activity from a list of 112 items. Respondent indicate their ratings from to a high degree good, good, little above average, little below average, poor, or self-same poor. This third generation of self-report methodologies is more comprehensive and more specific and provides richer information to use during interpretation than did the earlier approaches.