Many individuals face difficulties when making a career decision. Gati, Krausz, and Osipow (1996) proposed a taxonomy that classifies career decision-making difficulties into three major clusters, which are further subdivided into 10 categories. Based on the proposed taxonomy, they developed the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ), which has been since adopted and used in more than 50 countries. Despite its widespread use, the dimensionality of the CDDQ has not yet been fully demonstrated nor its measurement invariance sufficiently confirmed. To test the validity of the internal structure of the CDDQ, the data of 32,556 individuals from Australia, Canada, China, India, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States of America, who filled out the English version of the CDDQ on their own initiative, were analyzed. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original taxonomy and the reliability of the CDDQ scores. The CDDQ also demonstrated scalar invariance across the seven countries, gender, and age, but not career decision status. As career indecision is a major construct in vocational psychology, validating the internal structure of the CDDQ is a fundamental psychometric step with important theoretical, research, and practical implications.

Career indecision may be the primary reason people go to career counselors. Much effort has been exerted to identify and investigate the causes of clients' career decision‐making difficulties. With the aim of facilitating clients' career decision making, the use of career indecision assessments can promote the effectiveness and efficiency of face‐to‐face career counseling. The authors review three evidence‐based, cost‐free assessments derived from decision theory: the Career Decision‐Making Difficulties Questionnaire, the Emotional and Personality‐Related Career Decision‐Making Difficulties questionnaire, and the Career Decision‐Making Profile questionnaire. The unique features of these assessments are described, and the ways they can contribute to facilitating career decision making in career counseling are explored with a case study example.

The current research examined differences in career decision-making profiles (CDMP) between American and Chinese university students, as well as the meditational mechanisms possibly underlying these cultural differences. The results of a survey among American (N = 929) and Chinese (N = 945) undergraduates showed that Chinese participants scored significantly higher on consulting with others, desire to please others, willingness to compromise, dependence on others, procrastination, but lower on aspiration for an ideal occupation, internal locus of control, and effort invested in career decision-making than did the American participants. Using a model based on self-construals and subjective cultural norms, we established that interdependent self-construal, independent self-construal and the The dimensions of CDMP include information gathering (IG, the degree to which individuals are thorough in collecting information), information processing (IP, the degree to which individuals analyze and process information into its components), locus of control (LC, the degree to which individuals believe their career future is controlled by external forces rather than by themselves), effort invested in the process (EI, the amount of time and effort invested in the decision-making process), procrastination (PR, the degree to which individuals delay beginning or advancing through the career decision-making process), speed of making the final decision (SP, whether individuals quickly make final decisions once the information has been collected), consulting with others (CO, the extent to which individuals consult with others during the various stages of decision process), dependence on others (DO, the degree to which individuals expect others to make the decision for them), desire to please

Dysfunctional beliefs are among the most prevalent, severe difficulties many individuals face in the process of making career decisions. The goal of the present study was to develop and test a new multidimensional measure of Dysfunctional Career Decision-Making Beliefs ( DCB). The DCB questionnaire elicits individuals’ beliefs in five aspects of career decision-making: the role of chance or fate, the criticality of the decision, the role of significant others, the role of professional help, and perceived gender barriers. Study 1 used exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis to test the psychometric properties and the five-factor structure of the DCB with a sample of 937 young adults deliberating about their future career. Study 2 used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the structure of the DCB with another sample of 1,251 young adults and analyzed the associations between individuals’ DCB Scale scores and career decision status to test its concurrent validity. The results supported the proposed multidimensional model of dysfunctional beliefs. Implications for future research and career counseling are discussed.