Assessing Career Indecision

Assessing Career Indecision

Samuel H. Osipow

The Ohio State University

This paper discusses Hollands work toward the understanding and measurement ofcareer indecision that has grown out of his long-term theoretical and empirical efforts. Ageneral review of the history of career decision-making measures is included, along witha brief discussion of the applications of career theory and measures to practices incounseling. 1999 Academic Press

Key Words:career indecision; indecisiveness.

Career indecision has been a major concern of career psychologists for manyyears. Originally focused on the problem of career decision making of students,the issue now encompasses a broad life spectrum because of the increasedfrequency of events that require people to revise their career decisions over theirlife span. Instead of facing the need to make a career decision only during lateadolescence and early adulthood (if that was ever really the case) revised careerplans seem to be needed at a variety of life transitions. Each of these transitionsposes the potential for career indecision to occur. The awareness of this lifelongneed further increases the need to develop ways to measure and intervene incareer decision problems.

Prior to the 1960s, even though one of the most frequent problems collegestudents presented to career counselors was that of career indecision, there wasno standardized method to assess either the degree or the nature of careerindecision. The usual procedure followed when a measure of career indecisionwas sought was to ask respondents to use a Likert-type scale to rate their statuswith respect to one, two, or three questions about their degree of decidedness. Inaddition, little effort was made to differentiate between indecision and indeci-siveness. We now see indecision as a developmental phase through whichindividuals may pass on their way to reaching a decision. Thus, we have cometo see career indecision as a state which comes and goes over time as a decisionis made, is implemented, grows obsolete, and eventually leads to the need tomake a new decision (producing a temporary state of indecision). The processthen begins again. It has been speculated that over the life span the time period

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over which the cycle occurs gradually widens, so that the frequency of the needto make a career decision anew occurs less frequently.

Indecisiveness is a different process. Whereas indecision is a state that isnormal in human development, indecisiveness is not an ordinary part of humangrowth and development, but is, instead, a personal trait which generalizes acrosssituations demanding decisions. Thus, the most common way for us to determinewhether or not an individuals career uncertainty is indecision or indecisivenessis retrospectively. In other words, if someone repeatedly has trouble makingcareer or other decisions to the point where closure is not reached in time toimplement the appropriate behavior, we would probably see that person asindecisive. An individual can be undecided without being indecisive. However,an indecisive person would of necessity display undecided behavior at manydecision points during life.

Interest in assessing career indecision became widespread in the 1960s and1970s. It was an era when many individuals had several career options, the resultof which often was indecision. In order to better assess counseling outcome,reduction of indecision became an important issue. This was one of the forcesleading to the development of more standard measures of career indecision.

Hollands theory also came to the fore during this period. His theory wasoriginally formulated in the 1950s and has been revised and updated severaltimes, most recently in 1997. It presents an ideal way to approach careerindecision because one of the outcomes of the discrepancy between onespersonal type and ones choice or prospective choice is likely to be the inabilityto decide. It is therefore, understandable, that one of the events John Hollandbecame concerned with was the measurement of indecision.

Career counselors are of necessity increasingly interested in treating people whoare undecided about options. In providing interventions to help people make betterand more timely decisions it is important to know whether the behavior observed isindecision or indecisiveness. It has been assumed that counseling to resolve indeci-sion would have a different face than would counseling dealing with indecisiveness(although as far as I know there are no clear cut empirical studies to support thisview). Career counseling for indecision is usually a cognitive based approach inwhich logical processes are employed in collecting, sifting, and evaluating relevantcareer and personal information. Counseling for indecisiveness would will probablyresemble traditional therapy approaches that examine the personality antecedents ofthe problem. Recently a point of view has developed that sees career counseling andpsychotherapy as having many common features (Hackett, 1993), perhaps particu-larly when assisting indecisive individuals. In addition, the emotional aspects ofcareer decision making are more widely appreciated by counselors, and conversely,the cognitive aspects of personal counseling are seen to be more useful than formerly.

APPROACHES TO MEASURING INDECISION

When the first attempts were made to measure career indecision, there was notheoretical context available to guide the effort. Hollands theory had the poten-

148 SAMUEL H. OSIPOW

tial to serve such a purpose. Since Hollands theory assigns people to variouspersonality types which correspond to career fields it is conceivable that thosewho belong to two or more types equally would be likely to be undecided abouttheir careers. Such indecision would be most likely to result if the two types thatthe individual scored the highest on were in fields quite different from each other.For example, if a Realistic person scored equally high on the Social scale, areasonable prediction is that since these two very different types do not lead tocareers that would logically include characteristics of both or lead to job settingssatisfying both types, the result would be indecision. It is also conceivable thata person with low scores on all of the types would not have interests sufficientlycrystallized to permit a commitment to one field to be made. A third possibilityis that a person with high scores on all fields would similarly have so manyinterests that a decision might be hard to make. Finally, highly talented people,who possess many career possibilities as a result of their wide-ranging abilities,are likely to have trouble sorting among them. The result of that would beindecision. The first three possibilities noted above could all be derived fromHollands theory. The fourth one is related to the theory but the theory is notnecessary to lead to it.

In an early study dealing with career indecision, Holland and Holland (1977)proposed that indecision is the result of difficulties in personal and vocationalidentity. This study seems to have led to a more elaborate formulation of anapproach to measuring career indecision as reflected in an instrument known asMY VOCATIONAL SITUATION (MVS) (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980;Holland, Gottfredson & Power, 1980). The scale attempts to diagnose thedifficulties people have in vocational decision-making. According to Holland,Daiger, and Power (1980) such difficulties result from issues related to vocationalidentity, occupational information, and career barriers. The Vocational Identityscale measures the clarity of an individuals goals, interests, and talents as theyrelate to vocational decisions. The Occupational Information scale allows thecounselor to determine where, if anywhere, the clients career knowledge isdeficient. The Barriers scale provides a list of those obstacles that clients feel mayimpede their career decision-making.

It should be clear that by using these three categories, the career counselor isin a position to develop a treatment plan for intervening in the clients careerindecision. If Vocational Identify appears to be an issue, counseling to helpclarify and define the clients self-knowledge would be in order. If there appearsto be a lack of occupational information, this may easily be corrected through theuse of a variety of well-known sources, such as computer based career explora-tion problems or such occupational guides as the Gottfredson and HollandDICTIONARY OF HOLLAND OCCUPATIONAL CODES (1996). If the Bar-riers scale reveals significant information about impediments to the careerdecision-making process, these may be addressed directly in counseling.

At about the same time, Osipow, Carney, Winer, Yanico, and Koshier (1976)were developing another similar but different approach to assessing career

149ASSESSING CAREER INDECISION

indecision. The CAREER DECISION SCALE (CDS) was the result of a seriesof brainstorming sessions conducted by four of its authors (Osipow, Winer,Koschier, & Yanico, 1975) in which an attempt was made to identify all, or atleast as many as possible of the reasons people offer to explain the sources oftheir career indecision. (For a history of the development of the CAREERDECISION SCALE see Winer, 1992.) Originally conceived as an instrumentwhich would identify specific sources of career indecision where each item couldstand by itself clearly enough to determine differential counseling interventions,it evolved into a typological measure (Savickas & Jarjoura, 1991). Of the original16 content items, various factor analyses revealed that the items were notindependent but could be separated into factors, usually four (for details, see theCAREER DECISION SCALE MANUAL, Osipow, 1987). Although there hasbeen some controversy regarding the accuracy, or even of the existence of thefactors, (Laplante, Coallier, Sabourin, & Martin, 1994; Shimizu, Vondracek,Schulenberg, & Hostetler, 1988; Schulenberg, Shimizu, Vondracek, & Hostetler,1988; Shimizu, Vondracek, & Hostetler, 1994), it does appear that some orga-nizing substructure exists. Most users of the instrument, however, do not rely onthe factor structure, but rather use the total indecision score of the measure as anoverall index of ones level of career indecision. Examination of a personsresponses to individual items can reveal information about the sources of theindecision, which can then be used to direct counseling approaches to theproblem. Even more common, the instrument is used as a pre-post measure toestablish what, if any, changes have occurred in career indecision after counseling.

It is interesting to note that the CDS was an instrument derived totally from anempirical approach. Yet another approach to the measurement of career indeci-sion developed in the 1970s was Harrens (1976) ASSESSMENT OF CAREERDECISION-MAKING. In a manner different from the CDS and MVD thismeasure approached the issue of career indecision using Tiedemans andOHaras (1963) framework to career development.

In more recent times, what appear to be second and third generation ap-proaches to the measurement of career indecision have been appearing. Notableamong these is the measure of Chartrand, Robbins, Morrill, and Boggs (1990)known as the CAREER FACTORS INVENTORY and Jones (1989) CAREERDECISION PROFILE. These instruments approach career indecision with theview that it is multidimensional. Such an approach allows a more precisediagnosis of the causes of career indecision than do the earlier measures, and,as a result, may be more effective in leading to counseling interventions.

Most recently, Gati, Krausz, and Osipow (1996) have developed an instrumentcalled the CAREER DECISION DIFFICULTIES QUESTIONNAIRE. In con-trast to many of the earlier measures, this instrument has grown out of atheoretical taxonomy of the difficulties encountered in the career decision-making process. The taxonomy strives to identify several categories of thesources of career decision-making difficulties. It begins with dividing the diffi-


culties into those that occur prior to beginning the decision making process andthose that occur during the process itself.

Those difficulties that occur prior to the process involve a lack of readinessresulting from lack of motivation, indecisiveness, and those that result frombeliefs in dysfunctional myths about career decision making.

The difficulties that occur during the decision making process are furthersubdivided into lack of information about the self, occupations, ways of obtain-ing information, and information about the career decision making process itself.Under the category of inconsistent information are included problems resultingfrom unreliable information, internal conflicts, and external conflicts.

A 44-item questionnaire was devised to measure each of these various issues,the 44 items corresponding to the 44 difficulties identified in the theoreticalmodel. The resulting questionnaire is called the CAREER DECISION DIFFI-CULTIES QUESTIONNAIRE (CDDQ).

Results of several early studies (Gati, Krausz, & Osipow, 1996; Osipow &Gati, 1998; Gati, Osipow, Krausz & Saka, in press) suggest that the instrumenthas a sound psychometric base and has potential for applications in careercounseling. The structure of this instrument lends itself to the long sought goalof achieving the differential problem, differential counseling approach tocareer counseling. Individual items can be examined separately in the search forclues to identify sources of decision-making problems that can be addressedspecifically in counseling. Or, since the instrument is composed of a number ofindependent scales, the scale scores can be used to determine sources of diffi-culties, that, in turn, themselves, can be applied to the search for improved careerdecision making outcomes.

Thus, sophistication in the assessment of career indecision has come a longway since the early efforts of Osipow et al. (1976) and Holland, Daiger, andPower (1980).

THE ASSESSMENT OF INDECISIVENESS

There is a literature studying indecisiveness. Originally motivated to help usunderstand and identify those individuals in whom career indecision was a traitrather than a state, more recent efforts in the study of indecisiveness have beenapplied to the problems individuals have in dealing with decisions concerning arange of major life issues including but not limited to career issues. It has beenvery difficult to measure indecisiveness as a separate entity from indecision. Oneproblem has been in the identification of an appropriate criterion group. Forexample, in the career area, the underlying cause of some portion of thoseindividuals who are undecided stems from transitory issues, such as thosemeasured by an instrument like the CDDQ, while others reflect more stablepersonality factors. The difficulty is that since indecision and indecisivenessoften look the same, how do we know when someone is indecisive versusundecided? If we cannot separate them, it becomes next to impossible to devisea way to measure indecisiveness separately from indecision.


Haraburda (1998) examined the problem of measuring indecisiveness. His disser-tation includes an extensive review of the studies dealing with indecisiveness in avariety of life domains. Haraburdas research (1996; 1998) has attempted to deal withthese problems inherent in measuring indecisiveness and have produced encouragingpreliminary results. Haraburda used a variety of situations in which to couchindecision, ranging from career to numerous interpersonal issues. In his first study(1996) he developed preliminary measures of indecisiveness across a variety ofdomains and tested their validity against other, related measures. In his second study(1998) he examined decisiveness in the context of conflict resolution and socialrelationships using his scale, the MULTI-DOMAIN DECISIVENESS SCALE. Hefound that subjects who scored high in decisiveness were less neurotic and had fewerpsychological symptoms than did those who were indecisive. Those subjects whowere low in decisiveness scored lower in such characteristics as extraversion,openness to new experiences, agreeability, and conscientiousness, though thesecharacteristics were highly influenced by social desirability response styles. Theseresults allow us to speculate about the nature of those individuals who are indecisiveand consequently, to think further about the design of interventions to deal withindecisiveness as opposed to indecision. The results also lead to the consideration ofthe question of whether or not the personality attributes of the indecisive apply to theundecided as well.

COUNSELING APPLICATIONS

Now that we can measure indecision in a reasonably adequate fashion, howcan we use that information in counseling to help people resolve their indecisionwith a minimum of difficulty? Several directions emerge as possibilities.

The Campbell and Cellini (1981) TAXONOMY OF ADULT CAREER DE-VELOPMENT PROBLEMS can be useful. This taxonomy uses a set of specificstatements about the problems people have in major career problem areas:

Career decision-making, the implementation of career plans, and adapting toorganizational and institutional events. More specifically and of special interest,the sub-problem areas in the career decision-making category include gatheringinformation, generating, evaluating, and selecting alternatives, and formulatingplans for implementing decisions. The content of the major career indecisionscales relates to these problem areas, and, thus, can provide a way to differen-tially diagnose career indecision problems to focus interventions related spe-cifically to an individuals own, particular problems.

Other measures also exist to help in this regard. The CAREER DECISION-MAKING SELF-EFFICACY SCALE (CSMSE) (Taylor & Betz, 1983) canidentify those aspects of the career decision making process itself in whichclients may be deficient. Having done that, emphasis in counseling can be placedon helping individuals acquire the skills needed to progress further in their careerdecision status. This measure can be especially useful in identifying the gaps ina persons decision making skills that can point to specific issues for focus incareer counseling.


Career self-efficacy itself is also a concept that may be important in resolvingcareer indecision. One such measure is the short form of the Task Specific Occupa-tional Self-efficacy Scale (Osipow, Temple, & Rooney, 1993). This measure iden-tifies the degree of self-efficacy an individual reports in each of four major contentareas related to careers. Having so identified the strengths and weaknesses individ-uals report in these four areas, the counselor can try to change the clients self-efficacy expectations to be more congruent with their objectives. This is especiallyrelevant if decision making is blocked by a sense that an objective is not attainablebecause of uncertainty about ones capacity to perform adequately in preferred field.

A similar result can be obtained through the use of Swanson and TokarsCAREER BARRIERS INVENTORY (CBI) (1991) which allows the identificationof those issues that clients perceive to block their entry into a chosen field. Identi-fication of these barriers can lead to direct efforts in counseling to eliminate orovercome them. The CDDQ (Gati et al., 1996) can be used in the same way: that is,to identify specific features contributing to the individuals inability to make a careerdecision and, thus, lead to attempts to directly resolve those barriers.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that the methods to assess various aspects of career indecision overthe past 25 years have become plentiful and sophisticated. These methods haveled to counseling applications, something that is a hallmark of Hollands ap-proach to career issues.

It is impressive that John Holland could have done such seminal work onindecision while at the same time doing all his other creative and innovativetheoretical development, instrumentation, and empirical research in the careerdevelopment field. His contribution to the understanding of career indecision isone of the many several significant legacies Holland leaves to us.

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Received: February 15, 1999


APPROACHES TO MEASURING INDECISIONTHE ASSESSMENT OF INDECISIVENESSCOUNSELING APPLICATIONSCONCLUSIONREFERENCES

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Assessing Career Indecision