PERFECTIONISM - ITS MEASUREMENT AND CAREER RELEVANCE

The meaning and measurement of the construct of perfectionism has pote ntially important implications for career choice and career developmen t. The present article reviews the theoretical and empirical backgroun d of perfectionism. It then discusses the scales previously developed to measure perfectionism and describes the development of a new scale, the Almost Perfect Scale (APS; Slaney and Johnson, 1992). Two additio nal studies are presented on the APS. The first consists of three part s that examine the concurrent validity of the APS and the factor struc ture of the subscales of the APS relative to the subscales of two othe r scales developed to measure perfectionism. The second study examines the factor structure of the APS through the use of a confirmatory fac tor analysis. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for f uture research that would study the relationship between perfectionism and a variety of career variables.