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Research

BET

Counselling and evaluation tools (BET)

Project lead:
Prof. Dr. Stefan Höft
Prof. Dr. Matthias Rübner

Academic Field of Work

Counselling-related Impact Research

The BA operates within an extremely dynamic environment, marked by technical innovation, volatile markets and imbalanced opportunities to participate. Career counselling for market players - whether preventative, integration-oriented or lifelong – takes on an increasingly important role in BA business policy. Current challenges for counselling and integration work include securing skilled workers and overcoming long-term unemployment.

Since 2012, the National Employment Agency has pursued a new mission statement (cf. Rübner & Sprengard, 2010): Alongside counselling, which focuses on the sustainable integration of people in training and in the labour market, orientation and decision-making phases are seen as playing a significant role. For this purpose, research teams led by Prof. Höft and Prof. Rübner are developing a set of counselling and evaluationtools (known as BET), which caters for a variety of client (age) groups and concerns.

Key Research Questions

  • What constructs suitably describe the current status of a career choice and orientation process for people looking for support at employment agencies and in job centres?
  • Can these counselling-related characteristics be recorded both accurately and validly in a self-reporting procedure?
  • What measurable positive effects of counselling in general, related to the defined relevant characteristics are there?

The project began in the year 2013 with the target group "Berufliche Erstwähler unter 25 (First-time career decision-makers under 25)" (BET-U25) and field testing within the framework of individual professional counselling. During the course of the project, specialised application scenarios have been incorporated, such as the recording of people's career orientation who are participating in a vocational preparation programme (BvB). Further to this, a BET procedure for the professional (new) orientation of adults as well as a procedure for secondary level II had been finalised by the end of 2018.