Professor Peter Creed began professional life as a practitioner working with adolescents and adults who were displaced, confused about their life direction, or struggling with their careers. These interests carried over to research in the areas of career development, career progress, and career achievement. We spent five minutes with Peter to learn a little more….

In what area/s does your research interests lie?

My recent research interests have focused on the application of goal setting/ self-regulation theories …to understand how individuals set and adjust their career and life goals and manage the consequences of goal disruption, such as how they deal with negative affect[s] and implement behaviour change to reduce stress and improve performance.

[My] studies with young adults (including…[those] with special needs, e.g., youth in-care, hard-of hearing adolescents) have focused on career development and disruption and career transition, [and specifically], career distress, self-perceived employability, career calling, career-related feedback, goal importance, goal disengagement, vocational identity, goal [similarities], career compromise, and goal orientation.

Has there been major developments or key findings that have directed the trajectory of your research?

Earlier research [into adults] examined the well-being and behavioural effects of unemployment, long-term unemployment, and under-employment. [Building upon that I]… have focused on person-organisation fit, [the changing shape of one’s] career orientation, wellbeing, commitment, intentions of leaving [an employer], and career compromise.

What are you working on at the moment?

Most recently, I have examined how tertiary students manage joint work and study responsibilities and how students job craft to manage these demands. Some cross-cultural studies…have [also] focused on parental influences on career development — largely…on the effects of [dis-/ similarity] between parents’ and adolescents’ [goals] in Indonesia; career related feedback, that is, the effect of feedback on goal setting and adjustment, in China; and simulation-based virtual learning in Denmark.

Finally, are there challenges in your field/s in trying to bridge the gap between research, practice and policy?

[I have translated many areas of my research to interventions]; they include:

  • “Changing Wonky Beliefs” (with Machin)…aimed at adolescents and adults to help them manage their goal setting in relation to their life direction, improve their job seeking skills, and to improve their well-being;
  • “Out of care and onto further education, training and work: Career and life planning for young people in-care” (with Tilbury, Buys, Crawford and Praskova)…aimed at young people in care of the State who are transitioning from school-to-work and from care to out-of-care;
  • “The Career Choice Cycle” (with Prideaux and Patten),…[assisting] high school…students…with their career and life planning;
  • “The Cool Schools Program” (with Marsh and O’Callaghan)…to help reduce bullying and peer victimisation in the primary and high school environment; and
  • “Motivational Interviewing Treatment Program” (with Klag, O’Callaghan and Zimmer-Gembeck)…identifying and reducing discrepancies between desired and actual self/ situation for use with people in residential care with drug and alcohol problems.

A selection of Professor Creed’s academic publications can be accessed from his Griffith Experts page.