Career counselling effectiveness in career decision making

This study analyzes the effectiveness of a career counselling program aimed to help students to make a vocational choice in a career decision point. 178 students between 13 and 17 years of age participated in 5 weekly sessions of 90 minutes, and 143 other subjects composed the control group. Career exploration and vocational indecision were the assessed dependent variables. There were differences between groups in the pre test concerning sex distribution, career exploration and vocational indecision measures. In the post scores, experimental group had significantly higher scores in several career exploration dimensions and significantly lower scores in vocational indecision. The between-groups effect size (d Cohen) was medium to high for several career exploration dimensions and indecision, in the experimental group, and almost null in the control group. We can conclude that the counselling program is effective for the increase of exploratory behaviours and for the reduction of vocational indecision. Implications for counselling psychology practice and research are discussed.