Eliciting Life Stories Innovatively and Qualitatively: Using the CIP in Career Counseling

This chapter begins by explaining why the CIP was developed as a questionnaire to promote counseling self- and career construction as well as life design intervention. This is followed by a discussion of factors related to the theoretical and conceptual framework of the CIP. Next, I deal with the nature of the questionnaire and discuss briefly its aim and four-part layout before focusing on some requirements for administering the CIP. The importance of focusing on the CIP as a unit, the issue of how feedback to assessees should be given, and how qualitative analysis should be explained are then discussed. Information is provided to guide practitioners in their interpretation of responses to CIP questions. The chapter concludes with an explanation of how rigorous interpretation can be promoted, the key issue of choosing a career and linking this choice to writing mission and vision statements, crafting a career plan, and forward movement (including job analysis).