Measuring a three-dimensional construct of career indecision among college students: A revision of the Vocational Decision Scale: The Career Decision Profile.

Abstract

This article describes a revision of the Vocational Decision Scale called the Career Decision Profile (CDP). The CDP was administered to 221 undergraduates. The results support the reliability and validity of the Decidedness and Comfort scales and the four scales of the Reasons dimension: Self-Clarity, Knowledge About Occupations and Training, Decisiveness, and Career Choice Importance. Analyses indicated that: career decided students need career planning assistance; trait anxiety is more strongly associated with how students feel about their career decision status than how decided they are; the vocational decision status model provides a clearer picture of career indecision than current unitary approaches; and the CDP shows promise for differentiating among groups of students for treatment. I acknowledge the valuable feedback from two anonymous reviewers and the Editor as well as Charles Proctor's assistance with statistical analyses.

Psychological Separation and Dimensions of Career Indecision in Secondary School Students

“…This possible explanation for our results finds some support in a research by Brisbin and Savickas (1994) wherein three of the most well-known evaluation scales of career indecision, the CDS (Osipow et al, 1976), the VIS (Holland et al, 1980), and the CDP (Jones, 1989), managed to discriminate the diffusion and moratorium statuses, with the first status showing a higher level of indecision, as expected. However, none of the scales managed to discriminate the foreclosure from the achieved identity status.…”

“…However, an increasing number of authors have proposed that undecided individuals do not represent a group of homogenous characteristics and that career indecision should be conceptualized as a multidimensional construct (Betz, 1992;Callanan & Greenhaus, 1992;Chartrand & Camp, 1991;Fuqua, Blum, & Hartman, 1988;Holland & Holland, 1977;Larson, Heppner, Ham, & Dugan, 1988;Lucas & Epperson, 1988Rojewsky, 1994;Savickas & Jarjoura, 1991;Sepich, 1987;Wanberg & Muchinsky, 1992). This evolution is reflected in the emergence of second-generation instruments (see Savickas, 1992) which evaluate different dimensions of career indecision, such as the Career Decision Profile (CDP; Jones, 1989) or the Career Factors Inventory (CFI; Chartrand, Robbins, Morril, & Boggs, 1990).…”

University Students’ Career Choice and Emotional Well-Being

“…A 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) was used. The CDP has demonstrated reliability and convergent validity (Jones, 1989). To understand the relationship between one's emotional well-being toward reasons of career decision status, only thelack of self-clarity, lack of occupational-educational information,lack of decisiveness and career choice importance subscales were analyzed in this study.…”

“…Participants were provided with a questionnaire package on hardcopies at the beginning of the session in the middle of the semester. The package contained a demographics questionnaire, Hope Scale (Snyder et al, 1991), Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), and Career Decision Profile (Jones, 1989). The researcher briefed the participants about the purpose of this study and assured the confidentiality of their responses and personal information.…”

The Impact of Career Exploration on Career Development Among Hong Kong Chinese University Students

“…Regarding knowledge of self, in this study we tested how far career exploration is related to self-clarity (Jones, 1989). Barrett (cited in Quint & Kopelman, 1995) regarded clarity as "the sharpness or degree of awareness of an attribute" (p. 90) which is an essential component in the process of self-concept crystallization.…”