Development and Validation of Career Barrier Inventory(CBI) for Elementary School Students of South Korea

Objectives This study was to systematically develop a Career Barrier Inventory(CBI) for upper elementary school students and verify its validity. Methods The concept of the career barriers were defined and sub-factors of the career barriers were derived based on the monistic view limited to contextual barriers(Lent et al., 1994/2000) and related previous studies. Preliminary items were developed through previous studies. And a preliminary scale of 27 items was developed through the expert’s content validity verification and the subjects’ understanding of the prior items. A preliminary survey was conducted targeting upper grades of elementary school students nationwide, and 136 of the collected data were used for exploratory factor analysis. The main survey sampled a different group from the preliminary survey across the country, and 236 (94.4%) of the collected data were used in CFA, through which the optimal CBI for elementary school students was developed and a systematic validation procedure was performed. Results The Major results were as follows; First, through EFA using preliminary survey data, four latent factor were validly extracted and reliability was secured. Second, as a result of CFA using the main survey data, three items with a standardized regression weights(β) of .50 or less were removed and the goodness of fit index for the final CBI measurement model (24 items) were reviewed, and all were good. Third, as a result of calculating the AVE and C.R., of each sub-factor, all of the evaluation criteria were satisfied and the construct validity was verified. Fourth, as a result of conducting a correlation analysis based on social support, self-esteem and self-efficacy measure-ment tools to verify criterion validity, the correlations among sub-factors of each variable were all significant. And the overall the reliability (Cronbach’s α) of the final CBI, was found to be .912, and the reliability of each sub-factor was also confirmed to be good. Conclusions Based on the monistic career barriers advocated in Social Cognitive Career Theory, the concept and sub-factors of career barriers for upper grades of elementary school students were identified and a CBI for upper grades of elementary school students whose reliability and validity were verified through systematic procedure was developed.