CRC Exam (Certified Rehabilitation Counselor) — All Questions

A CRC uses Holland's theory to explain why a client with high Realistic interests felt out of place in a sales job dominated by Enterprising and Social demands. Which Holland concept explains the poor fit?

• a.High differentiation of the client's interest profile
• b.High consistency between the client's first two codes
• c.Low congruence between personality type and work environment✓
• d.Strong vocational identity formed early in adolescence

John Holland's theory holds that people seek environments that match their personality type and that congruence (the degree of person-environment match) predicts satisfaction and stability. Differentiation refers to how clearly one type stands out in a profile, consistency to how close a person's top codes sit on the hexagon, and vocational identity to clarity of goals; none of these describes a mismatch with the job.

A 17-year-old client is trying out part-time jobs, taking elective courses, and tentatively narrowing his career preferences. In Super's life-span, life-space theory, which stage is he in?

• a.Growth
• b.Establishment
• c.Exploration✓
• d.Maintenance

Donald Super's career stages are growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement; exploration (roughly adolescence to the mid-twenties) involves crystallizing, specifying, and trying out occupational preferences. Growth is childhood development of self-concept, establishment is stabilizing in a chosen field, and maintenance is holding and updating one's position.

Under the Minnesota Theory of Work Adjustment, an employer's judgment that a worker with a disability performs the job well is called the worker's:

• a.Satisfaction
• b.Congruence
• c.Occupational self-efficacy
• d.Satisfactoriness✓

The Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis and Lofquist) distinguishes satisfaction, the worker's contentment with the environment's reinforcers, from satisfactoriness, the environment's (employer's) evaluation of the worker's performance; together they predict tenure. Congruence is Holland's term for person-environment match, and self-efficacy is a social cognitive concept about a person's belief in his own capability, not the employer's judgment.

A CRC follows three steps with a client: understanding the client's abilities and interests, learning the requirements of occupations, and using reasoning to match the two. This approach originates with which theory?

• a.Trait-factor theory✓
• b.Social learning theory
• c.Developmental self-concept theory
• d.Psychodynamic career theory

Frank Parsons' Choosing a Vocation (1909) set out three steps: a clear understanding of oneself, knowledge of the requirements and conditions of work, and true reasoning on the relations between the two, which is the foundation of trait-factor and person-environment fit theory. Social learning theory emphasizes learning experiences, developmental theory emphasizes self-concept across stages, and psychodynamic theory emphasizes needs and early experience.

Under 34 CFR 361.5, supported employment services provided by the state VR agency for an individual with a most significant disability are generally limited to what period, unless jointly extended?

• a.6 months
• b.12 months
• c.24 months✓
• d.36 months

34 CFR 361.5(c)(54) says supported employment services are provided by the designated State unit for a period not to exceed 24 months, unless under special circumstances the individual and the counselor jointly agree to extend the time. After that, extended services from another source maintain the placement; 6, 12, and 36 months are not the regulatory limit.

A job developer meets an employer, learns that its kitchen staff spend hours rolling silverware, and negotiates a new part-time position built around that task for a client with a significant disability, with a schedule and supervision tailored to him. Under 34 CFR 361.5, this is:

• a.Extended employment
• b.Customized employment✓
• c.Sheltered work
• d.Transitional employment

34 CFR 361.5(c)(11) defines customized employment as competitive integrated employment for an individual with a significant disability, based on an individualized determination of strengths, needs, and interests, and carried out through strategies such as customizing a job description based on employer needs and negotiating duties, schedule, and supervision. Extended and sheltered work are non-integrated settings, and transitional employment is a time-limited placement model.

A mental health center adopts Individual Placement and Support (IPS). A client with schizophrenia who is still using alcohol says he wants to work now. How should the IPS team respond?

• a.Require three months of sobriety before any job search begins
• b.Start a rapid job search; anyone who wants to work is eligible✓
• c.Assign him to prevocational training in a sheltered workshop first
• d.Complete a full battery of vocational tests before job development

IPS principles include zero exclusion, meaning every client who wants to work is eligible regardless of barriers such as substance use, and rapid job search that helps people obtain jobs directly rather than through lengthy pre-employment assessment, training, or counseling. Sobriety requirements, prevocational sheltered work, and extensive testing before job search contradict those principles.

During mock-interview practice, a client asks what an employer may ask him before a job offer. Under the ADA regulations, which question is permitted at the pre-offer stage?

• a."Can you describe how you would perform this job's tasks?"✓
• b."Do you have any disability or health condition we should know about?"
• c."What medications are you currently taking?"
• d."Have you ever filed a workers' compensation claim?"

29 CFR 1630.13(a) bars pre-employment inquiries into whether an applicant has a disability or its nature or severity, while 1630.14(a) permits asking about the ability to perform job-related functions and asking the applicant to describe or demonstrate how he would perform them. Questions about disabilities, medications, or past workers' compensation claims are disability-related inquiries that must wait until after a conditional offer.

A client with a psychiatric disability wants to open a small bakery with VR support. Under 34 CFR 361, which statement is accurate?

• a.VR may fund only wage employment with an outside employer
• b.Self-employment qualifies only after two years in a wage job
• c.Self-employment is a recognized employment outcome VR can support✓
• d.VR must deny the goal because business income is uncertain

34 CFR 361.5(c)(15) defines an employment outcome to include competitive integrated employment such as self-employment, telecommuting, or business ownership, and 361.48(b)(19) authorizes technical assistance to conduct market analyses and develop business plans for individuals pursuing self-employment. The regulations impose no wage-job-first requirement and do not exclude self-employment because income varies.

Using Krumboltz's social learning theory of career decision making, a counselor helps a client see how past learning experiences and chance events shaped her beliefs about which jobs she can do. The theory names which influences on career decisions?

• a.Growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement stages
• b.Realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional types
• c.Satisfaction, satisfactoriness, reinforcers, and correspondence with work
• d.Genetic endowment, environment, learning experiences, and task approach skills✓

John Krumboltz's social learning theory identifies four factors influencing career decisions: genetic endowment and special abilities, environmental conditions and events, learning experiences, and task approach skills. The other options are Super's life stages, Holland's RIASEC types, and concepts from the Theory of Work Adjustment.