Searching for Tools Versus Asking for Answers: A Taxonomy of Counselee Behavioral Styles during Career Counseling

This article presents a new taxonomy of decision-making behavioral styles specific to clients in career counseling. It argues that clients differ along a dimension of "searching for tools versus asking for answers," that has three components: activity, independence, and insightfulness. Activity and independence have previously been discussed in the literature as a single component; client's insightfulness has not been treated as a component of behavioral style. The proposed taxonomy was tested on data from 372 clients of 11 vocational counselors using two confirmatory techniques, Similarity Structure Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Analyses confirmed the existence of the three correlated yet distinguishable components of one general dimension. Hypothesized relations of the activity, independence, and insightfulness components with counselors' satisfaction with both the process of counseling and its results were also supported.