Career Research From an Action Perspective: The Self-Confrontation Procedure

A videotape playback procedure (self‐confrontation) following a career‐related conversation is proposed as a means of studying career development from an action perspective. This perspective is premised on an understanding of career development as intentional, goal‐directed, and occurring in a social context. In this article, a career conversation between a parent and an adolescent is used to illustrate the procedure. During the individual playback, the participants are asked for their thoughts and feelings (cognitions) while the conversation took place, and their interpretation of it. The categories used in the analysis are described. This procedure provides contextually‐sensitive and empirically‐grounded data useful for researchers and practitioners.