1. Abstract
The Barrier to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument designed to identify, categorize, and quantify personal, logistical, educational, and psychological barriers experienced by individuals seeking entry or re-entry into the competitive labor market. Developed primarily by vocational psychologist John J. Liptak and published through JIST Publishing, the instrument serves as an intake, diagnostic, and psychoeducational tool tailored for unemployed adults, underemployed workers, displaced labor forces, and vocational counseling clients, particularly those with limited educational attainment. The BESI comprises 50 self-report items uniformly organized across five distinct vocational barrier domains: (a) Personal and Financial, (b) Emotional and Physical, (c) Career Decision-Making and Planning, (d) Job-Seeking Knowledge, and (e) Training and Education. Each subscale contains 10 items rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (“of no concern”) to 4 (“of great concern”). The inventory utilizes an integrated, color-coded self-scoring and self-interpretation format enabling rapid computation of domain-specific barrier indices within an administration window of approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Psychometrically, the instrument demonstrates high internal consistency reliability, with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients reported between .84 and .92 in primary adult job-training cohorts. However, comprehensive critical reviews published in the Mental Measurements Yearbook indicate that while the BESI possesses robust face and content validity for structured vocational intake interviews, empirical evidence establishing its structural factor invariance, convergent-discriminant validity, and longitudinal predictive utility regarding actual employment placement and retention remains limited. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric examination of the BESI, reviewing its historical development, theoretical foundations, psychometric parameters, administrative structure, clinical applications, and evaluative limitations.
2. Keywords
Barrier to Employment Success Inventory, BESI, vocational assessment, employment barriers, career counseling, vocational rehabilitation, underemployment, job search self-efficacy, psychometrics, disadvantaged job seekers
3. Authors
The Barrier to Employment Success Inventory was developed by John J. Liptak, Ed.D., an author, counselor educator, and psychometrician specializing in career assessment, vocational counseling, and mental health instruments for specialized and marginalized populations. Dr. Liptak has authored numerous vocational inventories, career development curricula, and clinical workbooks focusing on transition-age youth, adult job-seekers, and individuals with barriers to employment. The inventory is officially published and distributed by JIST Publishing / JIST Works (an imprint historically associated with Pearson and currently distributed by Paradigm Education Solutions/EMC Publishing), an organization dedicated to workforce development, career exploration, and vocational rehabilitation resources.
4. Purpose
The fundamental clinical and psychometric purpose of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) is to systematically identify, isolate, and address multidimensional obstacles that impede an individual’s ability to secure, navigate, and sustain competitive employment. Traditional vocational evaluations frequently prioritize cognitive aptitude, occupational skills, personality profiles, and expressed career interests. However, such assessments often operate under the latent assumption that job seekers possess baseline social stability, emotional regulation, functional career literacy, and logistical resources necessary to implement vocational choices. For economically disadvantaged individuals, displaced workers, individuals undergoing vocational rehabilitation, and populations with interrupted educational trajectories, the primary impediment to occupational engagement is seldom a lack of interest, but rather the compounding presence of structural, environmental, psychological, and informational barriers.
The BESI was specifically formulated to bridge this diagnostic gap by providing an accessible, standardized framework that translates diffuse feelings of career failure and distress into discrete, actionable barrier categories. From an applied intake perspective, the instrument facilitates collaborative goal setting between clients and career practitioners, social workers, workforce development specialists, and rehabilitation counselors. Rather than administering generalized personality or occupational interest batteries that provide little guidance on immediate employability hurdles, counselors utilize the BESI to identify whether an individual’s primary impediment stems from urgent personal and financial crises, psychological distress and somatic health limitations, deficits in vocational planning, unfamiliarity with modern job-acquisition strategies, or substantive gaps in academic credentials and technical competencies.
In clinical, vocational, and research environments, the BESI serves three overarching operational functions: (1) Intake and Diagnostic Triage, serving as a rapid, low-stakes self-assessment that reveals urgent survival-level deficits (e.g., lack of reliable transportation, child-care crises, urgent financial distress) versus skill-based deficits; (2) Psychoeducational Intervention and Action Planning, guiding the respondent through structured interpretive prompts that dismantle feelings of learned helplessness and encourage problem-focused coping mechanisms; and (3) Programmatic Evaluation and Needs Assessment within public workforce investment boards (WIBs), government-sponsored occupational initiatives (e.g., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] programs, Vocational Rehabilitation [VR] agencies, and re-entry initiatives for justice-involved individuals), where aggregate baseline and post-intervention barrier scores can track the efficacy of holistic workforce development services.
5. Psychological Construct
The psychological construct evaluated by the BESI is conceptualized as perceived barriers to employment success. In vocational psychology, employment barriers represent systemic, contextual, physical, behavioral, or psychological conditions that disproportionately increase the cognitive, emotional, and physical cost of career transition, job procurement, and occupational maintenance. The BESI conceptualizes this overarching construct as an aggregate composed of five interdependent, lower-order functional dimensions. Each dimension reflects a distinct domain of occupational hindrance characterized by specific behavioral manifestations and emotional sequelae:
1. Personal and Financial Barriers
This dimension encompasses concrete, environmental, and logistical limitations that impede daily stability and resource mobility. It assesses situational constraints including acute economic distress, debt burden, inadequate housing, lack of dependable transportation, legal difficulties, dependent care responsibilities (such as eldercare or childcare), and absent family support systems. An individual scoring high on this scale experiences acute survival pressures that directly compete with the cognitive bandwidth and logistical flexibility required to participate in interviews, attend vocational training, or maintain rigid workplace attendance schedules.
2. Emotional and Physical Barriers
The Emotional and Physical dimension measures internal psychological liabilities, affective distress, and somatic health conditions that compromise occupational functioning. Grounded in mental health and rehabilitation psychology, this subscale captures experiences of low self-esteem, generalized anxiety, depressive symptoms, demoralization stemming from prolonged unemployment, interpersonal sensitivity, substance dependency concerns, and chronic physical pain or disability. High scores indicate that the individual’s primary challenge involves emotional dysregulation, self-doubt, somatic vulnerability, or unaddressed trauma related to workplace marginalization.
3. Career Decision-Making and Planning Barriers
This subscale evaluates cognitive deficits and developmental delays in career maturity, vocational identity consolidation, and strategic life design. Grounded in career decision-making theory, it measures difficulties in articulating occupational preferences, chronic decisional indecision, lack of goal-setting proficiency, inadequate understanding of how personal values map onto occupational realities, and an inability to formulate step-by-step career roadmaps. Clients with elevated scores on this scale typically display vocational identity confusion, feeling directionless, paralyzed by choice, or entirely unaware of their vocational competencies.
4. Job-Seeking Knowledge Barriers
The Job-Seeking Knowledge dimension captures procedural and behavioral deficits regarding the technical mechanics of the contemporary job search. It assesses an individual’s unfamiliarity with identifying job leads, writing professional resumes, completing digital and paper employment applications, mastering behavioral interviewing techniques, engaging in professional networking, and negotiating employment offers. High scores on this subscale reflect functional illiteracy regarding the modern recruitment ecosystem, often leading to misdirected effort, persistent rejection, and premature abandonment of job-seeking behaviors.
5. Training and Education Barriers
This dimension quantifies deficits related to formal credentials, academic competencies, technical skills, and continuous occupational learning. Items in this domain evaluate the absence of a high school diploma or high school equivalency (GED/HiSET), lack of post-secondary certificates or vocational licensure, deficiencies in basic literacy and numeracy, and unfamiliarity with digital tools and computer technology required in modern labor markets. Respondents with high elevations on this scale face direct institutional filtering, wherein applicant tracking systems or minimum hiring criteria automatically disqualify them prior to personal evaluation.
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory is anchored in the convergence of two foundational paradigms in vocational and social psychology: the empirical taxonomy of employment obstacles established by Miller and Oetting (1977) and the cognitive-behavioral principles of Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, specifically as operationalized in Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994, 2000).
Miller and Oetting’s Taxonomy of Employment Barriers
In 1977, C. Dean Miller and Gene Oetting conducted seminal empirical investigations into the psychological, structural, and cultural obstacles confronting disadvantaged and structurally marginalized job seekers. By synthesizing qualitative client interviews, counselor feedback, and empirical case histories, Miller and Oetting generated an empirical catalog of 37 discrete barriers to employment, organized into four primary structural clusters alongside idiosyncratic single-item obstacles. Their findings established that structural barriers (e.g., educational deficits, legal records, transportation) rarely operate in isolation; rather, they interact dynamically with personal attitudes, self-concept, and social perceptions. The BESI operationalizes Miller and Oetting’s taxonomy by adapting their historical framework into a contemporary, psychometrically structured inventory that retains ecological validity for disadvantaged adult job seekers.
Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Perceived Barriers
Under Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s (1994) Social Cognitive Career Theory, vocational choice, performance, and persistence are governed by the dynamic interaction among three core cognitive variables: self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and personal goals. Crucially, SCCT posits that the direct translation of vocational interests into choice goals, and from choice goals into active career actions, is heavily moderated by contextual affordances—conceptualized as environmental supports and environmental barriers.
Lent and colleagues distinguish between objective barriers (e.g., the factual absence of public transit) and perceived barriers (the cognitive appraisal of those obstacles as insurmountable). The BESI operates precisely at this cognitive-phenomenological intersection. In accordance with Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional model of stress and coping, an objective life condition transforms into an occupational barrier when an individual appraises the condition as exceeding their personal coping resources. Thus, the BESI measures the client’s cognitive appraisal of threat and impediment across environmental, affective, and informational spheres. By rendering these perceived barriers conscious, measurable, and explicit, the inventory enables counselors to apply cognitive reframing, vicarious modeling, and strategic problem-solving to bolster the client’s vocational self-efficacy and active career agency.
7. Validity
Establishing the psychometric validity of the BESI requires examining content-related, construct-related, and criterion-related evidence as documented in the administrator’s manual and independent evaluations published in the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY).
Content and Face Validity
The content validity of the BESI represents its strongest psychometric attribute. Item generation followed a national-empirical, content-based construction strategy. The developer initiated an initial pool of 100 prospective statements derived from Miller and Oetting’s (1977) empirical taxonomy, extensive reviews of workforce development literature, and qualitative intake protocols from adult basic education centers. A panel of experienced vocational counselors, workforce development specialists, and career educators reviewed the 100 statements for developmental appropriateness, readability, cultural sensitivity, and theoretical alignment. Items judged to be ambiguous, redundant, or unrepresentative of real-world employment obstacles were eliminated, reducing the pool to approximately 75 candidate items. Following preliminary field trials with adult job training participants, the inventory was condensed to its final 50 items, distributed symmetrically across the five target scales (10 items per domain). The vocabulary and syntactic complexity were calibrated to ensure accessibility for individuals reading at or above the eighth-grade level, securing high face validity among adult basic education students and chronically unemployed populations.
Construct, Convergent, and Discriminant Validity
Construct-related validity evidence is constrained by the historical developmental procedures detailed in the test documentation. The developmental validation studies were primarily conducted on an aggregate sample of approximately 85 to 150 unemployed adults participating in a single government-sponsored job-training initiative, Starting Points. Correlational analyses among the five subscales reveal moderate inter-subscale correlations, generally ranging from .42 to .68. These intermediate correlations suggest that while the five domains tap into a shared overarching construct of general employment distress, they retain sufficient unique variance to warrant independent profile interpretation.
However, external psychometric reviewers in the Mental Measurements Yearbook have raised significant methodological critiques regarding construct validation. Specifically, the manual provides minimal formal convergent validity data against widely validated psychometric benchmarks, such as the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSES), the Career Barriers Inventory (CBI-R; Swanson et al., 1996), or standardized measures of psychological distress such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). Similarly, empirical demonstrations of discriminant validity—demonstrating that the BESI differentiates between situational vocational obstacles and generalized neuroticism or demoralization—are absent from the published documentation.
Criterion and Predictive Validity
The BESI’s criterion-related and predictive validity remains largely unestablished in published empirical psychometric literature. The test manual does not present longitudinal tracking studies evaluating whether baseline BESI scores systematically predict real-world vocational outcomes, such as:
- Latency to employment placement following program completion;
- Job tenure and 90-day/180-day employment retention rates;
- Hourly wage attainment and benefit acquisition;
- Program drop-out versus credential attainment in adult occupational training courses.
Consequently, while the BESI is clinically robust as an intake discussion guide, psychometric experts caution against utilizing raw BESI scores for high-stakes screening, selection, or administrative resource allocation without independent local validation.
8. Reliability
Reliability estimates for the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory are primarily focused on internal consistency and immediate scale coherence, evaluated within specialized job training cohorts.
Internal Consistency Reliability
The administrator’s manual reports high internal consistency for the composite score and its five constituent scales, as evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha (α). In the primary developmental cohort (N = 85 to 150 participants enrolled in public workforce training programs), the alpha coefficients were distributed across the subscales as follows:
- Personal and Financial Scale: α = .86
- Emotional and Physical Scale: α = .89
- Career Decision-Making and Planning Scale: α = .88
- Job-Seeking Knowledge Scale: α = .91
- Training and Education Scale: α = .84
- Total Inventory Composite (50 items): α = .94
These values comfortably exceed the standard psychometric threshold (α ≥ .80) recommended for diagnostic screening tools, indicating that the items within each domain exhibit strong internal homogeneity and measure cohesive thematic clusters.
Test-Retest Stability and Measurement Error
A notable limitation of the technical documentation is the paucity of longitudinal test-retest reliability data (rtt). Because the BESI measures situational and psychological barriers that are theoretically dynamic—fluctuating in response to immediate environmental shifts (e.g., securing temporary childcare, resolving transportation repairs) and therapeutic or educational interventions—establishing the baseline stability of the construct is essential. The absence of short-term (e.g., 2-week) test-retest coefficients leaves the instrument’s temporal stability and standard error of measurement (SEM) partially undefined. Users are advised to interpret individual point changes over time cautiously, recognizing that changes in scores may reflect genuine barrier alleviation, regression to the mean, or state-dependent measurement variance.
9. Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the BESI was originally established through classical rational-empirical test construction methods rather than modern latent variable modeling techniques. The initial five-scale framework was developed a priori based on Miller and Oetting’s (1977) work, with items categorized into domains through expert counselor consensus.
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
During secondary developmental trials, exploratory factor analyses utilizing principal axis factoring with orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations were conducted on the 50 items. The exploratory factor solutions generally supported the emergence of five primary factors corresponding to the hypothesized domains. Items showed dominant factor loadings typically exceeding .45 on their intended scales, with relatively low cross-loadings (< .30) on competing factors. The Five-Factor model accounted for approximately 52% to 58% of the total cumulative variance in the developmental sample, indicating reasonable latent construct representation.
Methodological Critiques and Lack of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
Despite the initial exploratory findings, formal confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) studies demonstrating structural validity across diverse socio-demographic samples are absent from peer-reviewed literature. Major psychometric reviews, including those in the Sixteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook, underscore critical technical deficiencies:
- Sample Size Constraints: The initial validation sample (N = 85 to 150) yields a participant-to-item ratio ranging from approximately 1.7:1 to 3:1, falling significantly below the contemporary psychometric benchmark of 10:1 (or a minimum of 500 respondents) required for stable factor solutions on a 50-item instrument.
- Model Fit Indices: Contemporary goodness-of-fit indices—including the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR)—are not reported in the manual.
- Measurement Invariance: There is no published empirical evidence verifying multigroup measurement invariance across biological sex, racial/ethnic minority status, disability status, or age cohorts. Consequently, researchers cannot determine with mathematical certainty whether elevated scores in particular subgroups reflect true differences in barrier prevalence or differential item functioning (DIF).
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
The operational administration, scoring, and formatting parameters of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory are structured as follows:
- Assessment Type: Standardized self-report inventory designed for self-administration, self-scoring, and collaborative interpretation in vocational counseling settings.
- Item Count: 50 items, distributed equally across five operational subscales (10 items per subscale).
- Target Population: Adult and adolescent job seekers, displaced workers, individuals receiving public assistance, vocational rehabilitation clients, and individuals entering or re-entering the workforce, possessing at least an eighth-grade reading level.
- Administration Modality: Available in physical, consumable paper-and-pencil inventory booklets and licensed computer-based/online administrative formats.
- Administration Duration: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes for item completion; an additional 10 to 15 minutes is typically allocated for self-scoring and completing the accompanying action-planning worksheets.
- Response Scale: 4-point Likert-type rating format:
- 1 = Of no concern (Item does not apply or poses zero obstacle)
- 2 = Of little concern (Item represents a minor, easily managed issue)
- 3 = Of some concern (Item represents a definite, notable challenge)
- 4 = Of great concern (Item represents an urgent, severe, or debilitating obstacle)
- Subscale Architecture:
- Scale 1: Personal and Financial Barriers (Items evaluate economic distress, transit access, family conflict, childcare, and legal issues; Score Range: 10–40)
- Scale 2: Emotional and Physical Barriers (Items evaluate health, depression, anxiety, anger, self-esteem, and physical stamina; Score Range: 10–40)
- Scale 3: Career Decision-Making and Planning Barriers (Items evaluate vocational indecision, goal-setting deficits, and career planning knowledge; Score Range: 10–40)
- Scale 4: Job-Seeking Knowledge Barriers (Items evaluate resume preparation, application completion, interviewing, and networking; Score Range: 10–40)
- Scale 5: Training and Education Barriers (Items evaluate lack of diploma/GED, technical certifications, basic literacy/numeracy, and computer skills; Score Range: 10–40)
- Scoring and Profiling Mechanics:
- Scoring employs a color-coded structural grid directly embedded in the consumable booklet. Responses to the 10 items belonging to a specific scale are aligned into designated colored columns.
- Raw scores for each column are summed manually by the respondent or counselor, yielding five subscale raw scores ranging from 10 to 40. A Total Barrier Score can be derived by summing all 50 items (Range: 50–200).
- Raw scores are plotted visually onto an integrated bar graph / profile chart that delineates categorical severity tiers:
- Low Barrier Concern (Scores 10–19): Minimal impediment; client demonstrates sufficient readiness in this domain.
- Moderate Barrier Concern (Scores 20–29): Noticeable obstacle requiring targeted intervention or supportive counseling.
- High / Critical Barrier Concern (Scores 30–40): Severe obstacle representing an immediate, disruptive threat to job procurement or retention; mandates prioritized case management.
- Action-Planning Component: The instrument concludes with structured prompts directing clients to select their top two highest-scoring domains, transcribe their most critical specific concerns, and draft an initial “Barrier Action Plan” linking each barrier to concrete community, educational, or counseling resources.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Barrier to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) was originally published in 2002 by JIST Publishing / JIST Works (Second Edition). The instrument is a commercial, copyrighted intellectual property. It is not available in the public domain, nor is it distributed under an open-source or Creative Commons license.
Practitioners, academic researchers, and institutional workforce agencies must purchase official administration booklets or digital assessment administrations directly from the publisher (Paradigm Education Solutions / JIST Career Solutions) or authorized educational psychometric distributors. Paper-and-pencil inventory booklets are typically packaged and sold in sets (e.g., packages of 25 booklets), accompanied by an Administrator’s Guide. Institutional licenses, academic research permissions, and digital delivery packages require formal commercial acquisition or written authorization from the copyright holder. Researchers intending to replicate or utilize the scale in scholarly research must contact the publisher’s rights and permissions division to secure appropriate licensing.
12. References
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45(1), 79–122. https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1994.1027
Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (2000). Contextual supports and barriers to career choice: A social cognitive analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47(1), 36–49. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.47.1.36
Liptak, J. J. (2002). Barrier to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) administrator’s guide (2nd ed.). JIST Publishing.
Miller, C. D., & Oetting, G. (1977). Barriers to employment and the disadvantaged. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 56(2), 89–93. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2164-4918.1977.tb04473.x
Plake, B. S., Impara, J. C., & Spies, R. A. (Eds.). (2005). Review of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory. In The sixteenth mental measurements yearbook (pp. 95–98). Buros Center for Testing.
Spies, R. A., Carlson, J. F., & Geisinger, K. F. (Eds.). (2014). Review of the Barrier to Employment Success Inventory. In The nineteenth mental measurements yearbook (pp. 68–71). Buros Center for Testing.
Swanson, J. L., Daniels, K. K., & Tokar, D. M. (1996). Assessing perceptions of career-related barriers: The Career Barriers Inventory. Journal of Career Assessment, 4(2), 219–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/106907279600400207