Vocational Discernment Through Faith Scale: development and validation
Date
2024
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Abstract
People who identify as religious/spiritual may pray for direction and then wait until a clear response is received, however, theologians have argued that God has historically guided career paths indirectly through one's utilization of resources aiding in self-reflection and career discernment. Practical career development recommendations have encouraged students who may identify as religious or spiritual to take active discernment approaches instead of passive discernment approaches within the career decision-making process. There is a paucity of research quantitatively exploring the role of religion/spirituality in one's career decision-making process. The current project involved two studies designed to comprehensively explore and investigate the validity and reliability of the Vocational Discernment Through Faith Scale, which quantitatively measured the constructs of passive discernment and active discernment approaches to the career decision-making process. Participants were undergraduate students at Colorado State University, a large Western (U.S.) public university, recruited from the population of students enrolled in introductory psychology courses. Results indicated initial evidence of psychometrically sound qualities of a condensed two-factor scale that showed adequate to good fit across factor analysis processes using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (Study One) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (Study Two). Results also suggested strong internal consistency reliability for the two dimensions of the scale, and promising test-retest reliability results. These results are promising, and point to the need for future research that continues to investigate the factor structure of the Vocational Discernment through Faith Scale.
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Embargo expires: 08/16/2026.