The structure of the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ, Gati, Osipow, & Krausz, 1996) was validated and compared across two age cohorts using Structural Equation Modelling. One hundred and twenty-one upper high school students (78 girls, 43 boys -mean age 15.92 years) participated in Study 1, while 127 adults (86 females, 41 males -mean age 33.44 years) completed the survey for Study 2. While the model confirmed the multidimensional structure of the CDDQ, five firstorder factors provided a better fitting model than the three higher-order factors postulated by Gati et al. The model fitted both groups, suggesting that a common pattern of difficulties was experienced by people of different ages, although older career deciders reported fewer difficulties with Internal Conflicts and Conflicts with Others than did students.
Career Decision Making 3 Factors influencing Career Decision Making in Adolescents and AdultsMuch of the research into career decision making (CDM) has represented the construct as a developmental task of adolescence (Crites, 1973;Super & Forrest, 1972). However, as changes in the workplace force us to revamp our concepts of long-term, stable patterns of jobs and careers, CDM is increasingly being seen as an ongoing part of one's involvement in the world of work. These changes require us to ascertain how well a construct that was originally defined and measured in the context of young people making career entry-level choices relates to the CDM behaviour of older workers faced with mid-career choice opportunities or dilemmas. There is also a need to re-examine the nomological framework of CDM, to determine its relationship with other constructs such as vocational interests, personality, and intelligence. The research reported here aims to address both these issues. Study 1 was intended to develop and test a model that brought together a wide range of variables considered to be important in CDM, while Study 2 looked at that model's applicability to an older population engaged in career shift.The notion of CDM has evolved from its original representation as a static, one-off event to its current conceptualisation as a dynamic construct incorporating both readiness and outcome variables. The role of vocational psychology has always been to help people make good career decisions (Savickas, 1995), and while this continues to be the main function of career counselling and the main focus of career development theory, there have been many changes in the way this task has been approached and conceptualised since the beginning of the 20 th century. At that time Parsons (1909) defined three key requirements of career deciders: self-knowledge, knowledge of work opportunities and conditions, and the ability to combine rationally the two sets of information. Parsons' work provided the basis for the matching or Career Decision Making 4 trait-and-factor approach, which was facilitated by the development in psychometric technology and the associated advances in the psychology of indi...
