Emotional and Personality-Related Career Decision-Making Difficulties

Abstract

This study tests the temporal stability and the concurrent and predictive validity of the Emotional and Personality-related Career decision-making Difficulties (EPCD) model and questionnaire. Five hundred forty-three participants filled out the EPCD twice, 3 years apart. The Anxiety cluster was the most stable of the three, followed by the Self-Concept and Identity cluster, and then the Pessimistic Views cluster, which showed a significant decrease. Participants who reported having made a career decision by the second administration had lower EPCD scores at Time 1 than did those who remained undecided at Time 2. Whereas the decided group showed a decrease in the EPCD scores during the 3-year interval, the undecided group showed no significant decrease. Significant correlations were observed between the EPCD scores and low satisfaction with one's chosen occupation. Gender differences were also found: among the decided group, women had higher EPCD scores than did men; overall, women had higher EPCD scores than did men only in the clusters of Anxiety and Self-Concept and Identity.

Validation of a Korean Translation of the Emotional and Personality-Related Career Decision-Making Difficulties Scale–Short Form (EPCD-SF)

“…Particularly, the correlation coefficients between Time 1 and Time 2 varied across the three dimensions. The dimensions of anxiety and self-concept and identity had higher temporal stability than did pessimistic views, and this result is consistent with the finding of the 3-year follow-up study on the original EPCD (Gati, Asulin-Peretz, & Fisher, 2012). The discrepancy in temporal stability may indicate that pessimistic views reflect one's cognitive view or perspective toward their world of work, which changes with one's experiences, but the other two clusters are associated more with emotional aspects that are intrapsychic and more stably maintained (Gati et al, 2012).…”

The Structure and Measurement of Career Indecision: A Critical Review

“…For example, it was found that the EPCD was associated with emotional and personality‐related variables, career decision‐making self‐efficacy, and the CDS (Hou et al, 2015; Jin et al, 2015; Saka & Gati, 2007). It was also found that the EPCD showed differential scores for students with different help‐seeking intentions, decidedness, and self‐reported difficulties (Gati, Asulin‐Peretz, & Fisher, 2012; Oztemel, 2013; Saka & Gati, 2007). Longitudinally, the EPCD was found to successfully predict later decidedness and choice confidence (Gati et al, 2012; Saka et al, 2008).…”

The Emotional and Personality-Related Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire—Validation of the Chinese Version

“…In a longitudinal study with 747 university students in Israel, Saka and Gati (2007) found that EPCD not only had a good structural validity but could specifically capture some stable and enduring components of career decision-making difficulties, given that the students who showed higher level of decision-making difficulties measured by EPCD had less progress and lower choice confidence after a 24-week time period. Finally, in a 3-year follow-up study, Gati, Peretz, and Fisher (2011) found that participants who reported having made a career decision after 3 years scores lower on EPCD at the first administration than did those who remained undecided after 3 years. Furthermore, whereas the decided group showed a decrease in the EPCD scores during the 3-year interval, the undecided group showed no significant decrease.…”