The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI)

Description

The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is a self-scored and self-interpreted inventory. The BESI is designed to help individuals identify their major barriers to getting or succeeding in a job. The publisher suggests the BESI will be especially useful for people preparing to look for a job, those who have not found a job, and those who are unable to keep a job. The BESI is a 50-item, paper-and-pencil or online assessment. It can be used individually or in groups and takes about 10–15 minutes to complete. The BESI is appropriate for teenagers and adults with at least an eighth-grade reading level. Items are rated on a 4-point scale (from “of no concern” to “of great concern”) directly on the inventory booklet. Responses are summed for items within a category, with higher scores indicating more concern with barriers. Color coding is used to indicate which item response scores are to be summed and carries through from item response to scoring to score interpretation. Because it is self-scored, immediate results are available. Examples relevant to core categories are listed, as are suggestions for overcoming barriers in each category. The BESI is intended for use as a career counseling tool to open a discussion of employment barriers and how they might be addressed. Scores are obtained for barriers in five categories: Personal and Financial, Emotional and Physical, Career Decision-Making and Planning, Job-Seeking Knowledge, and Training and Education.

Development

The BESI’s publisher cites research by Miller and Oetting (1977) that led to the development of the BESI. Miller and Oetting generated a list of 37 barriers to employment that clustered into four groups plus three single-item barriers. They identified barriers from a review of the literature plus consultations with disadvantaged clients. The author of the BESI developed 100 items based on Miller and Oetting’s work, a literature review, and consultations with employment and career counselors. Case studies, interviews with unemployed adults, and the literature on job search programs were also reviewed to develop inventory items. Professional counselors reviewed the 100 items for appropriateness, clarity, and category placement, reducing the item pool to approximately 75 items. It is unclear how the 75 items were reduced to the 50 items comprising the BESI.

A national-empirical method of test construction is cited for the BESI, which uses a content-based approach to develop scales that are designed to measure constructs identified as barriers to the unemployed in research studies. The author of the BESI notes that statements were designed to be realistic and based on an initial pool of 100 statements found in the literature and input from employment and career counselors. Counselors then placed the statements into one of the five categories (scales) and the author then discarded statements that did not represent barriers to employment, reducing statements from 100 to 75. There is no explanation of how the 75 statements were then reduced to the final set of 50 statements or items. Brief definitions of each scale are available in the administration’s manual.

Technical Details

The information provided in the source documents does not contain technical details for the Barriers to Employment Success Inventory.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Some data are reported about the reliability and consistency of scores attained from a sample of adults in one government-sponsored training program. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha) ranged from .55 to .82 with the combined normative group of 245 sales staff and sales trainees. Reliability is quite high.

Validity

There is no predictive validation evidence and minimal construct-related evidence reported for the BESI.

Commentary

The BESI scales and items were developed to reflect some of the concerns and barriers to finding and maintaining employment, primarily for less educated adults in a handful of studies. Generally, traditional methods were used in test development; however, the absence of a detailed description of these methods and the sample prevents a test user from evaluating the test development and test quality. Much of the basic descriptive data required for any new test is reported in the administrator’s manual; however, the lack of information on data collection, sample composition, administrative conditions, and characteristics of the respondents makes the data much less useful to the test user. Available documentation is inadequate.

The BESI is attractively packaged and easy to use and understand. Empirical validity evidence is lacking. Evidence of criterion-related validity would greatly strengthen the inventory’s utility. Evidence of the effects of job training on category scores would also be desirable. Although a profile with normative implication is included, its development was not explained. Only one small-scale study was conducted to assess psychometric quality, though additional data were available at the time of publication. Although five category scores are provided, there is no evidence to support the structure of the measure. As a tool to encourage people to start thinking about what keeps them from finding employment, the tool has face and content validity, is inexpensive, and provides immediate results. Suggestions for overcoming barriers are listed; however, these suggestions are simplistic and possibly impractical to implement without the assistance of a counselor.

The normative information is not supported and suggestions for overcoming barriers are simplistic. However, the stated purpose is to help individuals identify major barriers to employment and the inventory seems useful for this purpose.

Summary

The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is a self-scored and self-interpreted inventory designed to assist unemployed workers and vocational counselors who work with such populations to identify major obstacles to employment success. The inventory was developed to reflect barriers or problems encountered by adults in seeking and maintaining employment from a single intervention program, Starting Points. The inventory is relatively quick to complete and contains 50 items, evenly divided among five scales that reflect different types of barriers: Training and Education; Job Seeking.

Reviewer’s Reference

• Camara, W. (Not Provided). Review of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory, Second Edition. In J. C. Impara & B. S. Plake (Eds.), The Sixteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. Buros Institute of Mental Measurements
• Green, K. (Not Provided). Review of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory, Second Edition. In J. C. Impara & B. S. Plake (Eds.), The Sixteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. Buros Institute of Mental Measurements