Decision-Making Theories and Career Assessment: A Psychometric Evaluation of the Decision Making Inventory

Abstract

To address criticisms that the empirical literature on assessment of career decision making has tended to lack a theoretical base, the present study explored the relevance of a general theory of decision making to career decision making by assessing the psychometric properties of the Decision Making Inventory (DMI), designed to measure Johnson’s decision-making styles, and by exploring the usefulness of the DMI as a predictor of career maturity. The DMI, Form B1 of the Attitudes Scale of the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI), and the Self-Construal Scale were administered to European American college students.The DMI demonstrated adequate reliability, the expected factor structure, and good convergent validity. Relationships with certain subscales of the CMI suggest the DMI has useful predictive validity. Similarities and differences between genders in the relationships between the DMI and CMI were found.