The purpose of this study is to derive ethical elements of career counseling conducted in employment centers and to calculate their relative importance in order to establish priorities. To achieve this purpose, the study employed a three-stage researc...
The purpose of this study is to derive ethical elements of career counseling conducted in employment centers and to calculate their relative importance in order to establish priorities. To achieve this purpose, the study employed a three-stage research procedure that involved the derivation of a preliminary set of career counseling ethical elements, the validation of their content validity, and the calculation of the relative importance of the finalized ethical elements. The specific research methods and results are as follows.
First, a preliminary set of career counseling ethical elements was derived. Ethical elements were initially extracted and a theoretical framework was established through an analysis of ethical codes from domestic and international career counseling associations, as well as a review of previous studies on career counseling ethics. To supplement the ethical elements identified from the literature, focus group interviews (FGI) were conducted with 14 career counselors working at employment centers. The results of the literature review and FGIs were then integrated to construct a preliminary set of ethical elements, and classification work was carried out in collaboration with career counseling experts. Finally, after a review by experts in career counseling and ethics research, a preliminary framework consisting of 11 categories, 33 subcategories, and 100 ethical elements of career counseling was derived.
Second, to validate the content of the preliminary ethical elements, a three-round Delphi study was conducted with a panel of 30 career counseling experts. Content validity was assessed for categories, subcategories, and individual elements in terms of representativeness, clarity, and comprehensiveness using a five-point Likert scale. The ethical elements were revised and refined based on analyses of item-level means, the Content Validity Ratio (CVR), convergence, consensus, and stability indices, as well as qualitative feedback provided by the Delphi panelists. As a result, a final set of 12 categories, 33 subcategories, and 124 career counseling ethical elements was derived. The 12 categories consisted of ‘Client Rights’, ‘Counseling Relationship’, ‘Confidentiality’, ‘Professional Responsibility’, ‘Responsibility of Counseling Institutions’, ‘Provision and Use of Career Information’, ‘Group Counseling Programs’, ‘Psychological Assessment’, ‘Online Career Counseling Services’, ‘Supervision’, ‘Career Counseling Research’, and ‘Ethical Problem Resolution’.
Third, the relative importance of the career counseling ethical elements was calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP survey was conducted with 15 experts who had participated in the Delphi study and voluntarily agreed to take part in the importance assessment. Pairwise comparison questionnaires were administered, and the analysis was performed using the AHP-specific software I Make It. The results indicated that the priority ranking of the categories began with ‘Client Rights’ and ‘Confidentiality’, followed by ‘Counseling Relationship’, ‘Professional Responsibility’, ‘Ethical Problem Resolution’, ‘Responsibility of Counseling Institutions’, ‘Supervision’, ‘Psychological Assessment’, ‘Provision and Use of Career Information’, ‘Career Counseling Research’, ‘Group Counseling Programs’, and ‘Online Career Counseling Services’.
This study is meaningful in that it comprehensively integrates ethical elements of career counseling and systematically organizes their relative importance in a context where the significance of ethics in career counseling is increasingly emphasized. In addition, by providing practical guidelines applicable to the field as ethical standards for career counselors and foundational data for strengthening ethical competencies, the study offers concrete information to enhance ethical sensitivity among career counselors and counseling institution personnel, as well as to support the development of ethics education programs. Furthermore, the study suggests the need to shift the prevailing administrative-centered perspective on career counseling toward a counseling-centered perspective, and provides implications regarding the key ethical factors that should be prioritized in career counseling practice.