José F. Domene

The Action-Project Method in Counseling Psychology.

The qualitative action-project method is described as an appropriate and heuristic qualitative research method for use in counseling psychology. Action theory, which addresses human intentional, goal-directed action, project, and career, provides the conceptual framework for the method. Data gathering and analysis involve multiple procedures to access information from 3 perspectives: manifest behavior, internal processes, and social meaning. The method has a number of advantages, including its conceptualization, which is close to human experience; its systematic data gathering and analysis procedures; its usefulness in describing processes of interest to counseling psychologists: and its uniqueness among qualitative research methods.

Trajectories of career aspirations through adolescence and young adulthood: Early math achievement as a critical filter

Growth curve modelling was used to trace the trajectory of the prestige dimension of career aspirations from Grade 9 through to 3 years after high school, as a function of gender and early high school math achievement. The sample consisted of 218 university-bound adolescents (129 female, 89 male). Initial aspiration levels, the slope, and the curvature of the trajectories all differed significantly as a function of Grade 9 math performance. No significant gender or gender by achievement effects were found. These results support the notion that math achievement functions as a “critical filter” to subsequent career aspirations, with youth who performed poorly in Grade 9 math aspiring to careers that were of lower prestige. Implications of this research are discussed in terms of the development of young womens career aspirations, vocational outcomes, and involvement in higher level mathematics education.

Transition to Adulthood as a Parent-Youth Project: Governance Transfer, Career Promotion, and Relational Processes.

This study determined how youth (ages 17-21) and their parents jointly constructed and acted on goals and strategies pertinent to the transition to adulthood. Twenty parent-youth dyads were followed over an 8-month period using the qualitative action-project method. Data included their joint conversations, video recall of internal processes, self-monitoring logs, and researcher telephone monitoring. Detailed and repeated analysis of elements, functional steps, and goals resulted in the identification of an explicit joint project for each dyad that the participants saw as pertinent to the transition to adulthood. These projects referred broadly to the youth development of identity and social inclusion in the adult world and included the specific projects of career promotion, governance transfer, and parent-youth relational processes. The findings illustrate the complexity of the transition-to-adulthood process as well as its joint construction by parent and youth. Implications for practice include identifying and following the joint parent-youth transition project.

Adolescent Possible Selves as Jointly Constructed in Parent-Adolescent Career Conversations and Related Activities

The purpose of this research project is to describe the possible selves that parents and adolescents introduce and jointly adjust, adopt, maintain, or abandon in conversations about potential careers and related activities over an 8-month period. Data were gathered from 19 parent-adolescent dyads through observation of (a) parents and adolescents during videotaped conversations about the adolescents career-related future, (b) parents and adolescents during video recall of conversations, and (c) logs and telephone monitoring. Findings reveal two broad sets of processes pertaining to the construction of possible selves: “exploring options” and “trying on a possible self.”

Expanding the Action Project Method to Encompass Comparative Analyses

This article is an exploration of the possibility and pragmatics of conducting between-groups comparative analysis in action theory and the action project method of qualitative research. After establishing the need for such a procedure and describing the compatibility of these analyses with the paradigm assumptions of action theory, the authors describe a specific set of procedures for conducting qualitative comparisons within the action project method. They also discuss limitations of the procedure and future directions for continuing the expansion of methods of comparison in qualitative research. Finally, they present a case illustration of the use of this comparative analysis method.

Gender and Career Development Projects in Early Adolescence: Similarities and Differences between Mother-Daughter and Mother-Son Dyads

The way that mother-son and mother-daughter dyads engage in career projects was explored using the action-project differentiation procedure, a variant of the action-project method. The goal-directed actions, joint projects, and interactions of ten early adolescent boys and their mothers were examined in relation to the actions, projects, and interactions of ten early adolescent girls and their mothers. Many more similarities than differences were identified, including similarities in the kinds of projects that emerged, the amount of progress they achieved over time, and the patterns of communication that occurred. Two important distinctives also emerged: projects that included a focus on explicit vocational goals (e.g., career exploration, educational achievement) were common within the mother-son group but not the mother-daughter group; conflict and avoiding each other following conflict was often identified as a barrier to achieving projects in the mother-daughter group but not the mother-son group (although conflict was present in both groups).