Career HOPES: An Internet-delivered career development intervention

Career HOPES is an Internet-delivered group counseling intervention designed to facilitate occupational exploration and career decision making. The intervention includes automated interactive lessons and self-assessments, homework assignments, and group discussions in private online forums. A randomized, controlled experiment (N = 64) was conducted to evaluate (a) the efficacy of Career HOPES and (b) the contribution of professional moderation of the online group discussions to outcomes. Participants in two treatment conditions showed greater gains than control condition participants in career decidedness as measured by the Occupational Alternatives Questionnaire (d = .54), occupationally relevant self-knowledge (d = .58), and emission of career exploration behaviors (d = .50). In one of the treatment conditions, the online group discussions were moderated by a psychologist with career counseling experience; in the other treatment condition, the discussions were unmoderated. Professional moderation resulted in better outcomes on several variables and greater overall satisfaction with the intervention.