347

Construct and Concurrent Validity of the Career

Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire
Samuel H. Osipow
The Ohio State University

Itamar Gati
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
In order to examine the construct and concurrent validity of the
Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ),
responses of 403 university students (76% freshmen) to this
questionnaire as well as to the Career Decision Scale (CDS) and the
Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale (CDMSES) were
analyzed. As hypothesized, the correlation between the CDDQ and
the CDS was positive (.77), and the correlations of these two
questionnaires with the CDMSES were negative (-.50 and -.52,
respectively). The structure of the 10 difficulty categories of the
CDDQ replicated previous findings. In addition, undecided students
had significantly higher CDDQ and CDS scores, and lower CDMSES
scores than decided students. The implications of the findings for the
assessment of difficulties associated with career decision making in
counseling and research are discussed.
Many people face difficulties in making their career decisions. It is not
surprising therefore that the study of career indecision has received much
theoretical and empirical attention. The theoretical explorations have
focused on the characteristics, dimensionality, and sources of career
indecision (e.g., Campbell & Cellini, 1981; Savickas, Carden, Toman, &
Jarjoura, 1992; Shimizu, Vondracek, & Schulenberg, 1994; Slaney, 1988). The
empirical research has focused on the development of measures for
examining individual differences in career indecision. These measures

This research was supported by Grant No. 94-139 from the United States-Israel
Binational Science Foundation (BSF) and carried out at the NCJW Research Institute
for Innovation in Education of the Hebrew University.
We thank Naomi Fassa for valuable discussions, Mary Hill and Noa Saka for their help
in data collection and analyses, and Itay Asher, Gal Ram, and Orit Trumper for their
comments on an earlier version of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article and requests for offprints should be addressed
to Samuel H. Osipow, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1885 Neil
Avenue Mall, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail osipow.1@osu.edu or to Itamar Gati,
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, ISRAEL. E-mail
msgati@mscc.huji.ac.il

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 348

include, among others, the Career Decision Scale (CDS; Osipow, Carney, &
Barak, 1976; Osipow, Carney, Winer, Yanico, & Koschier, 1987; Osipow &
Winer, 1996), the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale (CDMSES;
Taylor & Betz, 1983), the My Vocational Situation (MVS; Holland, Daiger,
& Power, 1980), the Career Factors Inventory (CFI; Chartrand, Robbins,
Morrill, & Boggs, 1990), the Career Barriers Inventory (Swanson & Tokar,
1991), and the Career Beliefs Inventory (CBI; Krumboltz, 1991, 1994).
In an attempt to address Tinsley’s (1992) criticism that most of the
empirical research on career indecision has been carried out independently
of theoretical conceptualization, Gati, Krausz, and Osipow (1996) recently
proposed and empirically tested a new, decision-theory based, taxonomy of
difficulties in career decision making. To test the proposed taxonomy, a
new career indecision questionnaire was developed, the Career Decision-

making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ). The goal of the present study was
to further examine this questionnaire and, in particular, to investigate its
construct and concurrent validity.

The Taxonomy of Difficulties in Career Decision Making

The taxonomy proposed by Gati et al. (1996) was based on decision theory
which is recently playing an increasingly important role_ in understanding
the processes involved in career decision making (e.g., Brown, 1990; Gati,
’
1986; Jepsen & Dilley, 1974; Katz, 1966; Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1984;
Neimeyer, 1988; Osipow, 1987; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Phillips, 1994;
Pitz & Harren, 1980; Walsh & Osipow, 1988). The first step in the
development of the taxonomy was the characterization of an &dquo;ideal career
decision maker.&dquo; The &dquo;ideal career decision maker&dquo; is a person who is aware
of the need to make a career decision, is willing to make it, and is capable
of making the &dquo;right&dquo; decision (i.e., a decision which is based on an
appropriate process, and is compatible with the individual’s goals). Any
deviation from the &dquo;ideal career decision maker&dquo; is regarded as a potential
difficulty which can affect the individual’s decision process in one of two
possible ways: (a) by preventing the individual from making a decision, or
(b) by leading to a less than optimal decision.
The proposed taxonomy (Gati et al., 1996) is hierarchic, in which broad
categories are separated into specific categories, and then into subcategories
based on finer distinctions. Specifically, this taxonomy includes three major
categories of difficulties, which are then divided into 10 specific difficulty
categories, and finally into 44 subcategories representing distinct types of
problems. The first major difficulty category, Lack of Readiness, includes
three categories of difficulties which precede the engagement in making a
specific career decision: (a) lack of motivation to engage in the career
decision process, (b) general indecisiveness concerning all types of decision
making, and (c) dysfunctional beliefs (originally labeled dysfunctional
myths) about the process of career decision making.
The two other major difficulty categories, Lack of Information and
Inconsistent Information, include categories of difficulties which can arise
during the actual engagement in the process of career decision making.
Lack of Information includes four difficulty categories: (a) lack of knowledge

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 349

about the steps involved in the process of career decision making, (b) lack
of information about the self, (c) lack of information about the various
occupations, and (d) lack of information about the ways of obtaining
additional information. The third major category is Inconsistent Information
which is the result of: (a) unreliable information, consisting of difficulties
related to unreliable or fuzzy information; (b) internal conflicts, which
refers to incompatible preferences and other conflicts within the individual
(between preferences and abilities); and (c) external conflicts, which refers
to incompatibilities resulting from the influence of significant others. The
structure of the three major categories and the 10 specific categories are
summarized in Figure 1.
Further distinctions within each category are based on both theoretical
considerations and apparent practical significance. For example, within
the category lack of information about the self a distinction was made
between lack of information regarding preferences (&dquo;What do I want?&dquo;) and
lack of information regarding the individual’s capabilities (&dquo;What can I
do?&dquo;). For a detailed description of the taxonomy, see Gati et al. (1996).
The Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire
In order to empirically test the proposed theoretical taxonomy, Gati et al.
(1996) constructed the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire
(CDDQ). The CDDQ includes 44 statements corresponding to the 44 career
decision-making difficulties in the theoretical taxonomy. On the basis of the ,

responses to the 44 statements (listed in the Appendix in Gati et al., 1996),

10 difficulty scales were defined, corresponding to the 10 difficulty categories
in the taxonomy. Finally, three additional scores are computed, representing
the three major difficulty categories (Lack of Readiness, Lack of Information,
and Inconsistent Information). Higher scores on the CDDQ reflect greater
difficulties in making a career decision. Analyzing both an American and
Israeli an sample, Gati et al. found that the empirical structure of the
three major categories and the 10 specific difficulty categories was highly
similar to the theoretical structure (presented in Figure 1).
The Goal of the Present Research
The CDDQ was developed by Gati et al. (1996) in order to test the
theoretical taxonomy. It seems to us, however, that because of its unique
features, the CDDQ has the potential to serve as a diagnostic instrument
in the context of individual career counseling (e.g., for initial screening, to
help the counselor plan and guide the counseling process), as a needs
assessment instrument (to collect information about the kinds of difficulties
which frequently occur in particular groups), and as a sensitive measure to
evaluate the effectiveness of specific career interventions. However, all
these important and useful applications can be implemented only after the
CDDQ is transformed from a research questionnaire aimed at testing a
theoretical model into a validated clinical instrument. As a first step in this
direction, the present study was aimed at investigating the construct and
concurrent validity of the CDDQ.
To do that, we examined the empirical relations of the CDDQ with two
established measures associated with difficulties in career decision

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

350

~V§
CT&dquo;
I£
@#fiG
~~~
oQ~
~s
0 ~~
~ ~~
o
Eg <
o
~
u S 02
£ o.«
<D ~J S
!-’ ~. ~
O
j_ fl
P #l #?
X
p~UJ
~ ~ Q.’

gt£i#
C7.£
i~ C%
CJ~ O
’’-H.!-t0

~ 0 ~
U ’’~

’lllQ<
too?
pj _£l
.+
C6,
ri4cd
£ ~j
m

fl%
^ ~C,7
~t> Ui
U5
U
-o cd
~0-g
Vj ts
U
R ~ H

~~<!
C41
0~~ .
,..,
>.
S ~~
0~ ~
m
O
~Q ~
Cd b.0
to
’~~ 5
~S ~-
O

O
lmC4
s~~

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 351

making-the CDS and the CDMSES. We selected the CDS because its
indecision part (Items 3-18) provides an overall assessment of indecision
(i.e., higher scores reflect greater indecision) and it is considered the most
widely used indecision questionnaire (Betz, 1992; Slaney, 1988).
Furthermore, its items represent various problems encountered during
practical experience in career counseling (Osipow et al., 1976). The CDMSES
was selected because it includes five distinct, theoretically defined scales,

corresponding to the five career choice competencies suggested by Crites

(1973): Self-Appraisal, Occupational Information, Goal Selection, Planning,
and Problem Solving (Taylor & Betz, 1983). Higher scores on the CDMSES
reflects greater self-efficacy. We hypothesized that there is a positive
correlation between the CDDQ and the CDS, and a negative correlation
between the CDDQ and the CDMSES.
Finally, to test the CDDQ’s concurrent validity we examined whether
individuals with different levels of undecidedness receive different CDDQ
scores. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that individuals who describe
themselves as &dquo;undecided&dquo; have higher CDDQ scores (i.e., in the entire
questionnaire, and in each of the three major categories) than those who
describe themselves as &dquo;decided,&dquo; while the scores of those who describe
themselves as &dquo;slightly undecided&dquo; are in between.

Method
Participants
Four hundred and fifty students at a large Midwest university in the
United States completed the research questionnaires. We had to exclude from
the analyses the data of 47 students because their responses to the
questionnaires appeared to be uninformative (i.e., their responses indicated
lack of differentiation, see further details in the Analyses section). Thus, the
responses of 403 students (194 male, 206 female, and 3 who did not indicate
gender) were included in the analyses. Their age range was 16 to 33 years
(median and mode 18 years, mean 18.9 years, S’D 1.82 years). The majority
of them (76%) were freshmen, 15% were sophomores, 6% were juniors, and
2% seniors. Most of the participants were caucasian (80%); the others were
Asian Americans (7%), African Americans (3%), Hispanic Americans (1%),
non-Americans (or foreign, 7%); the remaining (2%) did not report
ethnic/racial data.
Instruments

The Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ)

The first page of the questionnaire included general background
information: age, gender, and year at the university (freshman/
sophomore/junior/senior), and three questions regarding the participants’
stage in the career decision process: (a) the degree to which they describe
themselves as undecided about their career choice (not at all / slightly / very),
(b) whether they have already considered a field of study or an occupation
(yes / no), and (c) for those who responded positively to the second question-

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

352

the extent of their confidence in that choice from 9 (very confident) to 1 (not
at all confident).
The six pages of the CDDQ include 44 items, each corresponding to a
particular difficulty. The participants were asked to rate on a 9-point scale
the degree to which the difficulty represented by each item (e.g., &dquo;It is
usually difficult for me to make a decision&dquo;) describes them from 1 (does not
describe me) to 9 (describes me well). The 10 difficulty category scores (as
well as the three major category and the total CDDQ scores) are defined as
the mean of the items belonging to them (range 1-9). Finally, at the end of
the questionnaire, participants were asked to rate the overall severity of
their difficulties in making a career decision from 1 (not severe at all) to 9
(very severe), and to list additional difficulties preventing them from making
a career decision, if such difficulties exist.

Analyzing two samples, Gati et al. (1996) found that the reliabilities of
the 10 scale scores representing the ten difficulty categories were
satisfactory: in the Israeli sample the median scale Cronbach alpha
reliability was .78 and the median test-retest scale reliability was .65; in the
American sample the median scale Cronbach alpha reliability was .77. The
Cronbach alpha reliability of the total CDDQ score was .95 in both samples.
The Career Decision Scale.
The CDS measures the antecedents of career indecision (Osipow et al.,
1976). The indecision part of the questionnaire consists of 16 items
representing various problems encountered by the questionnaire developers
during their practical experience with career clients. There is considerable
evidence for the test-retest reliability and the construct and concurrent
validity of this questionnaire (e.g., Osipow, 1987; Slaney, 1988). Because the
four-factor structure that includes lack of structure and confidence, external
barriers, approach-approach conflict and personal conflict as suggested by
Osipow et al. (1976) was not fully replicated in subsequent research, and
there is still ongoing debate about the dimensionality of the CDS (e.g.,
Savickas et al., 1992; Shimizu et al., 1994), in the present study we used only
the total indecision score of the CDS (defined as the sum of responses to the
16 indecision items, range 16-64).
The Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale (Taylor & Betz, 1983)
The CDMSES was developed to assess self-efficacy expectations associated
with career decision making. An example of an item is &dquo;make a career
decision and then not worry about whether it was right or wrong.&dquo; The
response to each such statement reflects the confidence of accomplishing the
described task and is given on a 10-point scale from 0 (no confidence at all)
to 9 (complete confidence). The questionnaire was developed on the basis of
the five career choice competencies suggested by Crites (1973); hence, it has
the following five scales: Self-Appraisal (SA), gathering Occupational
Information (01), Goal Selection (GS), making Plans for the future (PI),
and Problem Solving (PS). Taylor and Betz (1983) reported high scale
reliabilities, ranging from .86 to .89, but concluded, on the basis of factor
analyses, that the existence of five distinct scales which parallel the five
competencies is not supported empirically. Still, using 6 items per scale

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 353

instead of 10 as in the original version of Taylor and Betz (1983), Gati,

Osipow, and Fassa (1994) did find an adequate differentiation among the
scales. In the present study we used the short form version of the
questionnaire (Betz, Klein, & Taylor, 1996), and the sum of the 5 items of
each scale representing the scale’s score (range 0 to 45). The total CDMSES
score is the sum of the five scale scores (range 0 to 225).

Procedure
The participants responded to the three questionnaires in groups of 15
to 25 students as part of their course requirements in Introductory
Psychology. All participants responded first to the CDDQ, in order to avoid
potential carry over effects from the other two instruments. The order of
the other two questionnaires-the CDS and the CDMSES-was
counterbalanced across participants.

Analyses
An informal inspection of the participants’ responses to the CDDQ
revealed that the data of several participants was uninformative due to
identical responses in all, or almost all, items. In order to identify such
participants systematically, we counted the number of identical responses
(e.g., 7,7; 2,2) of each participant for adjacent items, and excluded from the
following analyses the responses of participants with more than 26 such
repetitions (60% out of the 43 adjacent pairs of items). Four hundred and
three participants (about 91% of the original sample) remained after this
screening procedure.
For each participant we then computed the following scores: (a) the total
score of the CDDQ, the indecision score of the CDS (the sum of responses
to Items 3-18), and the total score of the CDMSES, (b) the scores of the 10
scales and the 3 major clusters of the CDDQ (defined as the mean of the
items included in each scale), and (c) the score of the five scales of the
CDMSES (defined as the sum of the items included in each scale). Note that
higher scores on the CDDQ and the CDS indicate higher indecision, whereas
higher scores on the CDMSES indicate higher self-efficacy (which is
negatively related to indecision). Next, we computed the Cronbach alpha
reliability of the three questionnaires, as well as of their scales (i.e., the 10
scales and the 3 major categories of the CDDQ, and the 5 scales of the
CDMSES).
Then, using Pearson product-moment correlations we computed: (a) the
intercorrelations between the 10 scales of the CDDQ, and (b) the correlations
between the 10 scales, the 3 major categories, and the total score of the
CDDQ, on the one hand, and the 5 scales and the total score of the CDMSES,
and the total score of the CDS, on the other. Finally, in order to examine the
empirical structure of the 10 scales of the CDDQ, we used ADDTREE
(Sattath & Tversky, 1977), the same cluster analysis algorithm used by
Gati et al. (1996). ADDTREE is especially compelling because it represents
the proximity matrix in the form of an additive or &dquo;path length&dquo; tree, in
which the variables are divided into clusters according to the proximity
between them (as reflected in the strength of correlation between them).

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

354

Results

Psychometric Properties of the CDDQ, the CDMSES, and the CDS

A comparison between men and women revealed no gender differences in
the total CDDQ (t(398) 1.40, ns) or its three major categories, as well as
=

in the CDS (t(398) 1.23, ns) and in the CDMSES (t(398) = -0.80, ns);
=

hence, we report only the aggregated results. The means, standard

deviations, and Cronbach alpha reliabilities of the 10 scale scores of the
CDDQ, its three major categories, and its total score are presented in Table
1. The Spearman rank-order correlation between the 10 mean scale scores
found in this study and those obtained by Gati et al. (1996) is very high (.98),
reflecting stability in the relative severity of the difficulties in the population
from which the two samples were drawn.
As can be seen in Table 1, the Cronbach alpha reliabilities of the CDDQ
scales varies significantly. The two scales with the lowest reliability were
dysfunctional beliefs (.32) and lack of motivation (.54), replicating the
findings in the American sample of Gati et al. (1996). The other scales had

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Reliabilities of the Career
Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) Scales

Note. N = 403.

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 355

moderate to high reliabilities, ranging from .67 for the scale of internal
conflicts to .91 for external conflicts (the median scale reliability was .75).
Among the three major categories Lack of Readiness had the lowest
reliability (.62); the reliabilities of the two other major categories were
much higher (.86 for Inconsistent Information and .94 for Lack of
Information). The reliability of the whole questionnaire was .94.
Table 2 presents the means, standard deviations, and Cronbach alpha
reliabilities of the five scales of the CDMSES as well as its total score, and
of the total score of the CDS. As can be seen in Table 2, all the scale scores
of the CDMSES had high reliabilities, ranging from .78 for Problem Solving.
to .85 for Goal Selection. The reliabilities of the whole questionnaires were
also high: .95 for the CDMSES and .85 for the CDS.

Table 2
Means, Standard Deviations, and Reliabilities
of the CDMSES and the CDS

Note. N = 403. CDMSES = Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale; CDS = Career

Decision Scale.

The Internal Structure of the CDDQ

The intercorrelations among the 10 scale scores of the CDDQ are presented
in Table 3. The Spearman rank-order correlation between this
intercorrelation matrix and the parallel matrix of the American sample of
Gati et al. (1996) was very high (.94). The clustering structure derived
from this intercorrelation matrix (by using ADDTREE) is presented in
Figure 2. The distance between any pair of scales in this clustering structure
is represented by the sum of the horizontal segments on the shortest path
connecting them. The linearly accounted for variance by the distances in the
clustering structures was 96%, reflecting that the clustering structure in
Figure 2 adequately summarizes the empirical relations among the scales.
In light of the high resemblance between the two intercorrelation matrices,
it is not surprising that this clustering structure is highly similar to that
obtained by Gati et al.

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

356

Table 3
Intercorrelations Among the Career Decision-Making
Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) Scales

Note. Rm =Readiness (motivation), Ri Readiness (indecisiveness), Rd Readiness

= =

(dysfunctional beliefs); Lp Lack of knowledge (about the process), Ls Lack of

= =

Information (about the self), Lo Lack of Information (about occupations), La Lack

= =

of Information (about additional sources), Iu Inconsistent Information (unreliable

=

information), Ii Inconsistent Information (internal conflicts), Ie Inconsistent

= =

information (external conflicts).

As may be seen in Figure 2, the empirical clustering structure is similar,

although not identical, to the hypothesized theoretical model underlying the
CDDQ (see Figure 1). As expected, the 10 scales are grouped into three
clusters corresponding to the hypothesized three major categories: Lack of
Readiness, Lack of Information, and Inconsistent Information. Furthermore,
there is a distinction between the first major category, which includes
difficulties arising prior to the beginning of the career decision-making
process, and the last two major categories which include difficulties arising
during the actual engagement in this process. However, in contrast to the
expected structure, the scale of external conflicts was located in the cluster
of Lack of Readiness rather than in the cluster of Inconsistent Information.
The same deviation from the hypothesized structure was also found in the
American sample of Gati et al. (1996).

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 357

~
u
oj
h-)

H
0
.-)
co’
1
~5
cj
v
fl
m

run
U
tQ<
<t1
0’~
%t1
t1>
’~ ~
~3 --~
~3 0)
~~
? ~
O
·O U

bio
if£ cd
Cd
~ ~
~.S
Tfl U~

liii
4l .%
o
-g
2 S
4.4
o
<D ~
~ <u
#%
U
O
t1<
.,.4
:5 ~ I
H
0 j=j
Q) 0
£%
Pt1
c§fl
~ ,0
~~
~’-’
4-4
O

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

358

The Relations Between the CDDQ and the CDS and the CDMSES
Table 4 presents the correlations between each of the 10 CDDQ scales, the
three CDDQ major categories, and the CDDQ total score, on the one hand,
and each of the five CDMSES scales, the CDMSES total score, and the
total CDS score, on the other hand. As hypothesized, the correlation between
the total score of the CDDQ and the CDS was positive (.77, p < .001), and
the correlation between the CDDQ and the CDMSES was negative (-.50,
p < .001). The correlation between the CDMSES and the CDS was, as
expected, also negative (-.52, p < .001).

Table 4
The Correlations Between the Career Decision-Making
Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) Scales
and the CDMSES Scales and CDS Scale

Note. CDMSES = Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale; CDS Career Decision =

Scale; SA Self Appraisal; OI Occupational Information; GS Goal Selection; PL

= = = =

Planning; PS Problem Solving.

=

As can be in Table 4, all the five scales of the CDMSES correlated

seen
most strongly with the CDDQ scales which belong to the major category of
Lack of Information. Specifically, the Self-Appraisal scale of the CDMSES
correlated most strongly with lack of information about self (-.45); the

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 359

Occupational Information scale correlated most strongly with lack of

information about additional sources of information (-.35); Goal Selection
correlated most strongly with lack of information about self (-.55); Planning
correlated most strongly with lack of information about self (-.40) and lack
of knowledge about the process (-.39); and finally, Problem Solving correlated
most strongly (-.34) with lack of knowledge about the process, lack of
information about self, and lack of information about additional sources of
information. The relatively similar pattern of correlations with the CDDQ
scales observed for the five CDMSES scales is probably the result of the
insufficient differentiation among these five scales, reflected in the high
intercorrelations among them (range .59 to .77, median .70), replicating
previous findings (Taylor & Betz, 1983).
The correlations of the 10 scales of the CDDQ with the CDS, presented
in Table 4, were all positive. However, these correlations vary noticeably. The
highest correlations are with the major categories of Lack of Information and
Inconsistent Information (.71 and .72, respectively). Within Lack of
Information the correlations with the CDS were higher with the scales of
lack of knowledge about the process and lack of information about the self
than with the scales of lack of information about occupations and lack of
information about additional sources of information. Within Inconsistent
Information the correlation of the CDS was lower with the scale of external
conflicts than with the other two scales. Finally, the correlations between
the CDS and the major category of Lack of Readiness and its three scales
were much lower. These lower correlations may be attributed, at least in
part, to the lower reliability of these scales.
Concurrent Validity
Using the participants’ responses to the question about their degree of
decidedness, which preceded their responses to the CDDQ items, we divided
them into three groups: &dquo;decided&dquo; (n 122), &dquo;slightly undecided&dquo; (n 216),
= =

and &dquo;undecided&dquo; (n
=
64). Table 5 presents the mean scores in the three
CDDQ major categories and the mean total scores of the CDDQ, the
CDMSES, and the CDS, for the three groups. As can be seen in Table 5, these
three groups differed in all six comparisons (all Fs were statistically
significant, p < .001). As hypothesized, the scores of the &dquo;undecided&dquo; group
were the highest and those of the &dquo;decided&dquo; group were the lowest, in the

CDDQ and the CDS; as expected, the opposite pattern emerged in the
CDMSES. Among the 12 planned contrast (comparing first the &dquo;decided&dquo; and
the two other groups, and then the &dquo;slightly undecided&dquo; and the &dquo;undecided&dquo;
groups), 11 were statistically significant (p < .05). Note, that the differences
between the &dquo;decided&dquo; and the &dquo;slightly undecided&dquo; participants were larger
in all six comparisons than the differences between the &dquo;slightly undecided&dquo;
and the &dquo;undecided&dquo; groups.
Table 5 presents the correlations between the scores of the three CDDQ
major categories, and the total scores of the three questionnaires, on the one
hand, and the participants’ self-report of the severity of their career decision
difficulties (at the end of the CDDQ), on the other. All six correlations were
statistically significant. As expected, the correlations with the CDDQ and

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 360

CU’
~
v

~
u
cC
u

S
M
%l
~
lil
biD
Cd
x
&copy;l
A

~U m
~o

c~ ~ U
U

l%ll Q
9 CO
Q)~spj U &.

&copy;l 9 @ C7
’og§~
U ~
II ~s
~
~Q H S
~u
~.o ~ <~
.~~ Q s
~ £
m ~ O’ <D-
9
c!
4$
~ A y N

~bA
c~ ,~ U
S
<
O
o#
X
Q

E-~ a~.~ ~~ ~
M
(D
U

opc N S~
~ O’ @9
hB 0!! cc 4~
C ’S E ’tj
2 <~ ~ t0
u o
S
bi)
°t s
.-s
~I
V §0
l f6 ^ cd
0~
Ua t~
p V~
p ’2~ ~~
Cd
Q CQ tD ~ u

§ I ~~
cd
9 ,p
~§S;2 u

cd
cti L) ~’

5. S b^~A c~
11 G~’~
cqq ~ h .« ~ @ mm£j
~S0~ ’-’ O
Cd
&dquo;0
0 §~ ’r~
~ cq
.&dquo;
~~v
# ££-4--lcd ~~

~
~U ~ ~
t
A

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 361

the CDS were positive, whereas the correlation with the CDMSES was

negative. In fact, it is rather surprising that the correlations of this single

question with the total scores of both the CDDQ and the CDS were so high
(.69 and .61, respectively).
Discussion
The goal of the present study was to examine the construct and concurrent

validity of the CDDQ which was developed on the basis of a theoretical

model for difficulties in career decision making. The results are promising,
suggesting that the CDDQ can be used for counseling and research purposes
after improving its psychometrics properties. Specifically, the empirical
structure of the 10 CDDQ scales was similar to the theoretical model and
replicated the findings of the American sample in Gati et al. (1996): the three
major categories emerged as expected and a distinction was observed
between the major category of Lack of Readiness and the other two-Lack
of Information and Inconsistent Information. The only significant exception
from the theoretical model involved the location of the scale of external
conflicts (which was located in Lack of .Readiness instead of in Inconsistent
Information). The reliabilities of the scales and of the three major categories
also replicated previous findings, where the scale of dysfunctional beliefs had
a particularly low reliability, but the other scales’ reliability were moderate
to high. No differences between men and women were observed in the mean
difficulty of the scales or the major categories, nor in the structure of the
scales. As hypothesized, the CDDQ had a high positive correlation with
the CDS and a moderate negative correlation with the CDMSES. Finally, also
in accordance with our hypothesis, significant differences in the CDDQ
scores-in the three major categories as well as the total score-were
obtained between &dquo;decided,&dquo; &dquo;slightly undecided,&dquo; and &dquo;undecided&dquo;
participants and each in the expected direction.
The comparison of the CDDQ to the CDS, the most prevalent measure of
career indecision, demonstrates some of the CDDQ’s unique features. First,
unlike the CDS, which was constructed primarily on the basis of practical
experience (Osipow et al., 1976), the development of the CDDQ also
incorporated theoretical considerations. Second, the CDDQ enables the
assessment of systematic categories of difficulties, that is, groups of
difficulties which share some common features, such as similar source,
timing, impact, needed intervention, etc. Moreover, the CDDQ allows three
levels of categorization to be used, depending on the particular goal in the
given context: that of the three major categories, that of the 10 scales, and
even that of the subscales (following the within category distinctions
suggested in Gati et al., 1996). Third, the CDDQ includes a wide range of
difficulty categories, some of which are represented in the CDS (as well as
in many other indecision measures) only indirectly (e.g., lack of motivation
by Item 5 of the CDS) or by a single item (e.g., lack of information about
occupations appear to be represented only by Item 17 of the CDS). These
characteristics of the CDDQ enable it to go beyond the general overall
assessment of indecision which is well assessed by the CDS (Osipow et al.,
1987), hence justifying its introduction as a possible addition to the CDS in
some contexts, and as an alternative to it, in others. ,

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

362

Implications
Research
While the present study provided support for the construct and concurrent
validity of the CDDQ, there are issues which deserve further attention.
First, since the sample was homogeneous (80% caucasians) future research
should explore differences in the relative prevalence of the 10 difficulty
categories among various ethnic groups. Second, the present study
replicated Gati et al. (1996) findings concerning the questionable nature
of the dysfunctional beliefs scale, expressed in its particularly low
reliability. The stability of such results calls for further research focusing
on the source, range, co-occurance, and impact of these irrational and

dysfunctional expectations (Nevo, 1987; Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon,

& Saunders, 1996).
Another unclear finding replicating Gati et al. (1996) is the source of
the consistent mislocation of the external conflicts scale which includes
items such as &dquo;disagreement between a significant other and the individual
concerning desirable career characteristics&dquo; and &dquo;disagreement between
different significant others concerning the recommended career alternative.&dquo;
Specifically, in the present study, exactly as was found in the American
sample of Gati et al., this scale was located in the cluster of Lack of
Readiness, instead of in Inconsistent Information. It should be noted that
this deviation from the theoretical model was not found in the Israeli
sample of Gati et al. (1996). The most straight forward explanation for
this difference between the American and the Israeli samples is the effect
of cultural differences. Gati et al. (1996) attributed this deviation to the
younger age of the American students (the median and mode age were 18
years in both US samples, whereas in the Israeli sample they were 21
years). Moreover, the Israeli participants were tested immediately before
discharge after 2 or 3 years of military service, and, thus, out of the home
for 3 years, on the average. Further research with older and more
heterogenous American samples is required in order to pinpoint the exact
location of the external conflicts category.
One interesting question raised by a unique result of the present study
concerns the high correlation between the total CDDQ score and the self-

reported severity of difficulty (rated by the participants immediately after

ending the CDDQ). We believe that this high correlation reflects the fact that
after the participants reviewed a long list of potential difficulties, their
awareness of their own difficulties increased. In other words, filling out the
CDDQ led them to review in a comprehensive and systematic way their own
difficulties in career decision making, that apparently increased their
ability to make an informed evaluation of their own situation. This
hypothesis can be tested in further research by comparing the self-reported
severity of difficulty provided before and after responding to the CDDQ
(using both within-subject and between-subjects designs).
Counseling
Although indecisionshould not be regarded automatically as undesirable
(Krumboltz, 1992), many career interventions are aimed at facilitating the

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

 363

process of career decision making of individuals. Indeed, many measures of

indecision which permit an overall assessment of the difficulties in career
decision making are available, but the CDDQ has the advantage in that it
permits a more detailed evaluation of the specific type of difficulties-at the
level of the three major categories and that of the 10 difficulty scales. This
more refined assessment may be used for various purposes including needs
assessment of a particular group, as an additional diagnostic tool during
&dquo;intake&dquo; prior to the beginning of the counseling process, and in evaluating
the distinct effectiveness of specific interventions.

Computer-Assisted Career Guidance Systems (CACGSs)

One of the features of personal career counseling is the ability of the
counselor to tailor the counseling process to the unique needs of the
particular client. Although without pretending to provide personal
counseling, many CACGSs attempt to provide not only career information
but also guidance in the process of career decision making, (Gati, 1996;
Katz, 1993). The diagnosis of individuals’ unique difficulties in making a
career decision is a crucial aspect of improving career guidance, as it directs
them to those components of the system which are more relevant to them,
or to personal counseling in cases when the CACGS can not provide the

required help (e.g. when the individuals face difficulties related to external
conflicts). We believe that after introducing the necessary changes and
computerizing it, the CDDQ can provide such an initial assessment of
difficulties. The unique features of the CDDQ permit us to conclude that the
CDDQ appears to be a significant addition to the available set of indecision
measures.

References
Betz, N. E. (1992). Career assessment: A review of critical issues. In S.D. Brown & R.W.
Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (pp. 453-484). New York: Wiley.
Betz, N. E., Klein, K., & Taylor, K. (1996). Evaluation of a short form of the Career
Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale. Journal of Career Assessment, 4, 47-57.
Brown, D. (1990). Models of career decision making. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.),
Career choice and development (2nd ed., pp. 295-421). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Campbell, R. E., & Cellini, J. V. (1981). A diagnostic taxonomy of adult career problems.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 19, 175-190.
Chartrand, J. M., Robbins, S. B., Morrill, W. H., & Boggs, K. (1990). The development and
validation of the Career Factors Inventory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 37, 490-501.
Crites, J. O. (1973). Career Maturity Inventory: Theory and research handbook. Monterey,
CA: CTB/McGraw-Hill.
Gati, I. (1986). Making career decisions: A sequential elimination approach. Journal of

Counseling Psychology, 33, 408-417.

Gati, I. (1996). Computer-assisted career counseling: Challenges and prospects. In M. L.
Savickas & B. W. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice (pp. 169-
190). Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.
Gati, I., Krausz, M., & Osipow, S. H. (1996). A taxonomy of difficulties in career decision
making. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43, 510-526.
Gati, I., Osipow, S. H., & Fassa, N. (1994). The scale structure of multi-scale measures:
Application of the split-scale method to the Task-Specific Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale and
the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale. Journal of Career Assessment, 2, 384-397.
Holland, J. L., Daiger, D. C., & Power, P. G. (1980). My Vocational Situation. Palo Alto,
CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015

364

Jepsen, D. A., & Dilley, J. S. (1974). Vocational decision making models: A review and
comparative analysis. Review of Educational Research, 44, 331-349.
Katz, M. R. (1966). A model for guidance for career decision making. Vocational Guidance
Quarterly, 15, 2-10.
Katz, M. R. (1993). Computer-assisted career decision making: The guide in the machine.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Krumboltz, J. D. (1991). Manual for the Career Beliefs Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting
Psychologists Press.
Krumboltz, J. D. (1992). The wisdom of indecision. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 41,
239-244.
Krumboltz, J. D. (1994). The Career Beliefs Inventory. Journal of Counseling &
Development, 72, 424-428.
Mitchell, L. K., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1984). Research on human decision making: Implications
for career decision making and counseling. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of
counseling psychology (pp. 238-280). New York: Wiley.
Neimeyer, G. J. (1988). Cognitive integration and differentiation in vocational behavior.
The Counseling Psychologist, 16, 440-475.
Nevo, O. (1987). Irrational expectations in career counseling and their confronting
arguments. Career Development Quarterly, 35, 239-250.
Osipow, S. H. (1987). Manual for the Career Decision Scale. Odessa, FL: Psychological
Assessment Resources.
Osipow, S. H., Carney, C. G., & Barak, A. (1976). A scale of educational-vocational
undecidedness: A typological approach. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 9, 233-243.
Osipow, S. H., Carney, C., Winer, J., Yanico, B., & Koschier, M. (1987). The Career
Decision Scale (Rev. ed.). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
Osipow, S. H., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1996). Theories of career development (4th ed.). Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
Osipow, S. H., & Winer, J. (1996). Career assessment and the Career Decision Scale.
Journal of Career Assessment, 4, 117-130.
Phillips, S. D. (1994). Choice and change: Convergence from the decision making perspective.
In M. L. Savikas & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Convergence in career development theories (pp. 155-
163). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Pitz, G., & Harren, V. A. (1980). An analysis of career decision making from the point of
view of information processing and decision theory. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16,
320-346.
Sampson, J. P., Jr., Peterson, G. W., Lenz, J. G., Reardon, R. C., & Saunders, D. E.
(1996). Career Thoughts Inventory: Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological
Assessment Resources.
Sattath, S., & Tversky, A. (1977). Additive similarity trees. Psychometrika, 42, 319-345.
Savickas, M. L., Carden, A. D., Toman, S., & Jarjoura, D. (1992). Dimensions of career
decidedness. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 25, 102-112.
Shimizu, K., Vondracek, F. W., & Schulenberg, J. E. (1994). Unidimensionality versus
multidimensionality of the Career Decision Scale. Journal of Career Assessment, 2, 1-14.
Slaney, R. B. (1988). The assessment of career decision making. In W.B. Walsh & S.H.
Osipow (Eds.), Career decision making (pp. 33-76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Swanson, J. L., & Tokar, D. M. (1991). Development and initial validation of the Career
Barriers Inventory. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 39, 344-361.
Taylor, K. M., & Betz, N. E. (1983). Applications of self-efficacy theory to the understanding
and treatment of career indecision. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 22, 63-81.
Tinsley, H. E. A. (1992). Career decision making and career indecision. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 41, 209-211.
Walsh, W. B., & Osipow, S. H. (Eds.). (1988). Career decision making. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.

Downloaded from jca.sagepub.com at Virginia Tech on February 27, 2015