The Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale: Instrument development and training applications

This article reports on 4 studies that addressed the development of the Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale (CCSES). The instrument evidenced moderate to high internal consistency across the studies and strong test-retest reliability over a 2-week period. Convergent validity was supported by correlations with years of career counseling experience and several scales of an emotional-social counseling self-efficacy measure. Discriminant validity was evidenced through an absence of relations between the CCSES total score and years of emotional-social counseling experience, emotional-social counseling self-efficacy, and research self-efficacy. In addition to the evidence just mentioned, construct validity was supported by increases on the CCSES after a career course and varying levels of efficacy commensurate with status in the field. The use of this instrument for training and evaluating therapists who provide career counseling is discussed.