The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI)

Abstract

The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is a 50-item, self-scored, and self-interpreted psychological instrument designed to assist individuals in identifying significant obstacles that impede their ability to secure or maintain employment. Developed primarily as a career counseling tool, the BESI provides immediate feedback to initiate discussions regarding potential employment barriers and strategies for addressing them.

The inventory is administered via paper-and-pencil or online formats, typically requiring 10 to 15 minutes for completion. It utilizes a 4-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “of no concern” to “of great concern.” Scores are aggregated across five core categories: Personal and Financial, Emotional and Physical, Career Decision-Making and Planning, Job-Seeking Knowledge, and Training and Education. The BESI is suitable for teenagers and adults possessing at least an eighth-grade reading level.

Keywords

Employment barriers, vocational assessment, career counseling, job seeking, psychological inventory, self-scored assessment, unemployment, job training.

Authors

The specific author of the Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is not explicitly named in the available documentation, which only refers to “The author of the BESI.” The scale’s development was foundationaly influenced by the research of Miller and Oetting (1977).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the BESI is to serve as a diagnostic and discussion tool within career counseling settings. It is specifically intended to help job seekers, particularly those who are struggling to find work, or those who frequently lose employment, to pinpoint their major personal, logistical, or skill-related obstacles.

The inventory facilitates a structured conversation between the counselor and the client by providing quantified scores across the five predefined barrier categories. The self-scored nature of the inventory ensures that participants receive immediate results, which include suggestions for overcoming barriers in each category, although these suggestions are often noted as simplistic and potentially impractical without professional assistance.

Construct

The BESI is designed to measure the psychological and practical construct of Barriers to Employment Success, defined by five distinct, content-derived categories. These categories represent common obstacles encountered by unemployed or underemployed individuals, particularly those with less formal education.

The five measured scales, which form the core structure of this psychological scale, are:

• Personal and Financial: Barriers related to personal stability, housing, transportation, and monetary concerns.
• Emotional and Physical: Obstacles related to mental health, stress, physical limitations, or general well-being that impact job performance or attendance.
• Career Decision-Making and Planning: Difficulties in setting realistic career goals, understanding personal interests, or planning long-term vocational paths.
• Job-Seeking Knowledge: Lack of necessary skills or information regarding effective job search techniques, resume writing, or interviewing.
• Training and Education: Concerns regarding insufficient formal education, vocational training, or required certifications necessary for desired employment.

Validity

Evidence supporting the validity of the BESI is currently limited, posing a challenge for test users seeking to evaluate the instrument’s overall quality. The documentation reports minimal construct-related evidence for the five-factor structure.

Critically, there is a notable absence of predictive validation evidence, meaning the BESI has not been sufficiently demonstrated to predict future job acquisition or job retention success. While the inventory possesses strong face validity and content validity—it appears to measure relevant barriers and its items are drawn from literature review and counselor consultation—empirical support for its utility in predicting real-world outcomes remains largely unavailable. Reviewers suggest that robust evidence of criterion-related validity would significantly enhance the inventory’s practical use.

Reliability

Data regarding the reliability of the BESI scores were obtained from a single, government-sponsored training program sample, combined with a normative group of sales staff and trainees (N=245). The primary measure of consistency reported is Internal Consistency Reliability.

The internal consistency, measured using Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha, ranged from .55 to .82 across the different scales within this combined normative group. While the higher end of this range (.82) suggests adequate consistency for some scales, the lower end (.55) indicates potential issues with the homogeneity of items within those specific barrier categories.

Factor Analysis

The development of the BESI utilized a national-empirical method of test construction, emphasizing a content-based approach derived from literature and expert consultation. However, the available documentation is criticized for failing to provide detailed descriptive data or an explanation of how the initial pool of 75 items was reduced to the final 50 items.

Furthermore, there is no reported evidence from factor analysis or related psychometric studies to empirically support the hypothesized five-category structure of the measure. Despite providing five distinct category scores, test users lack the necessary data to confirm that these five scales represent distinct and measurable psychological constructs related to employment barriers.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychological Inventory / Vocational Assessment Tool

Format: 50-item, 4-point Likert scale (ranging from “of no concern” to “of great concern”). Self-scored and self-interpreted.

Language Available: English (implied, based on source documentation)

Population Group: Unemployed adults, job seekers, and individuals struggling with job retention.

Age Group: Teenagers and Adults.

Population Details: Requires a minimum of an eighth-grade reading level. The scale was primarily developed to reflect concerns of less educated and disadvantaged clients, drawing foundational research from studies of disadvantaged populations (Miller and Oetting, 1977).

Test Methodology: Content-based development using a national-empirical method. Scoring involves summing responses within five color-coded categories, resulting in immediate interpretive feedback.

Keywords

Psychometrics, vocational guidance, test development, self-assessment, Miller and Oetting, employment success, criterion validity, internal consistency.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source documentation.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source documentation.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source documentation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Information regarding specific test year, publisher permissions, and associated fees is not available in the source documentation. The scale has been reviewed in the The Sixteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook, suggesting a potentially recent or updated edition (Second Edition) was published prior to that volume’s release.

Reference’s

• 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.
• Miller, C. D., & Oetting, E. R. (1977). Barriers to employment of the disadvantaged. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 56(2), 89-93. (Cited as foundational research for the BESI development).

Items of the The Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The specific 50 items comprising the Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) were not included in the provided source material.