Career decision‐making difficulties among career‐decided college students

Abstract

AbstractThe procedures developed by Gati and colleagues to interpret scores in the Career Decision Difficulties Questionnaire were implemented to examine difficulties’ profiles among self‐identified decided college students who reported being either comfortable or uncomfortable with their career choice. Of the 583 participants, 92.5% were career decided and 7.5% were undecided. Close to half (47.2%) of the career‐decided students self‐identified as uncomfortable with their career choice and reported similar career decision‐making difficulties as their undecided peers. The most salient difficulties among decided uncomfortable students were general indecisiveness and lack of knowledge regarding occupations and the decision‐making process. Greater difficulties related to lack of knowledge about oneself, and internal conflicts predicted membership in the decided uncomfortable group versus the decided comfortable group. Results indicated that career‐decided students are not a homogenous group. Implications of the findings for career counseling with decided uncomfortable college students are discussed.