Locating vocational interest inventory results in client biographies : The use of some social structures in test interpretation interviews

The purpose of this descriptive study, conducted with a methodology adapted from ethnomethodology and conversational analysis, was to investigate the sequential talk occurring in face to face interpretations of vocational interest inventories in order to demonstrate that, and how, such interviews are a socially organized accomplishment of the participants. Data consisted of five transcripts of interpretation interviews, three conducted by experienced counselors and two by inexperienced counselors. All but one of these interviews were conducted as part of a several-day vocational workshop designed to assist members of farm families who are considering career alternatives. The findings of this study were the following: (a) that counselors, in interaction with clients, use the test profile form to identify and sequence topics for the talk; thereby, they constrain the clients to talk about the test results and document how they can be categorized as typical kinds of people with typical vocational alternatives available to them; and (b) that counselors further constrain client talk by initiating normative conversational structures called adjacency pairs and then reserving the right to summarize, that is, formulate, client talk. These conversational practices constitute the methods by which counselors invite clients to locate the source of the test results in their own biographies and thereby make the scores available as grounds for client vocational decision making.