Development and Validation of a Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale for Career Counseling Teachers

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a scale for assessing the career counseling self-efficacy of career counseling teachers. Methods: For this purpose, 96 preliminary items were developed by analyzing previous studies on the career counseling of career counseling teachers, as well as literature on career counseling self-efficacy and the roles of career counseling teachers. These preliminary items were then evaluated by school career counseling experts. A preliminary study involving 234 career counseling teachers across South Korea was conducted to perform an EFA. Subsequently, a main study with a sample of 548 participants was carried out to conduct both EFA and CFA. Results: The final scale consisted of 36 items across five factors “Client Empowerment Facilitation”, “Information and Resources Utilization”, “Counselor Attitudes and Competencies”, “General Career Counseling Skills”, and “Specialized Career Counseling Skills”. The scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α = .964 overall; subscales ranged from .808 to .895). CFA supported a hierarchical factor structure in which the five sub-factors were subsumed under a single higher-order factor. Model fit indices indicated an acceptable level of model fit. Conclusion: The results confirm that the developed scale is a psychometrically sound tool with strong reliability and validity. Implications for the use of the scale in training and professional development programs for career counseling teachers are discussed.