Efficacy of a group career construction intervention with early adolescent youth

Career construction for life design aims to assist individuals across developmental age periods to anticipate and manage career transitions. We developed and implemented a group career construction intervention based on the My Career Story (MCS) workbook and compared it with a traditional career intervention for fostering life-career design among early adolescent youth. Participants (N = 108) were assigned based on convenience to an experimental group (27 girls, 27 boys) or a control group (27 girls, 27 boys). All participants responded pre- and post-intervention to measures of career adaptability, hope and optimism, and resilience and future orientation. Results indicated increased post-intervention scores on career adaptability and future orientation measures for the experimental group but not for the control group. Likewise, moderation analysis revealed post-intervention increases in scores on measures of the concern and control dimensions of career adaptability for the experimental group only. No significant changes occurred in hope and optimism or resilience scores for either group. Social validity analysis supported participants' perceived efficacy, usefulness, and satisfaction with the career construction counseling group intervention. The MCS shows promise as a narrative-based intervention to promote particular aspects of youth life-career construction. Future research is needed to further examine and support the efficacy of the MCS for this purpose.