Post-secondary students who are not sure about the direction of their career path often look with great envy upon students who are “career-decided”: i.e., those who have chosen a career goal, educational program, and major. The career-decided students are perceived as being able to put all their energy into pursuing their path rather than into indecision, exploration, or anxiety. The reality, however, is that many career-decided students are not comfortable with their decision. They may not be as “decided” as they appear. Arbona and colleagues’ study investigates the differences between comfortable and uncomfortable career-decided students’ career decision-making difficulties as well as difficulties between decided and undecided students.
Using the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) with 583 undergraduate students representing a wide range of race/ethnicity, social class, years of post-secondary completion, and other characteristics, the researchers assessed career decision-making difficulties of comfortable and uncomfortable career-decided students as well as career-undecided students. Comfort was measured with transparent multiple-choice questions asking about the person’s status regarding their career choice and their satisfaction with the choice.
Arbona et al. found the expected result that career-decided comfortable students’ difficulty levels were lower than both undecided and career decided uncomfortable students’ levels on 9 of the 10 career difficulty subscales within the CDDQ.
Less expected was the finding that uncomfortable career-decided students and undecided students differed on only one subscale: lack of motivation. In other words, identifying as “career decided” rather than “career undecided” does not appear to lessen the difficulties of career decision-making.
The study also found that general indecisiveness was the top difficulty for more than 50% of all students and over 80% of undecided and uncomfortable decided students. Their interpretation of this finding points to the possibility that indecisiveness may:
- simply reflect the realities of being in a rapidly changing work world at a stage in life in which much change is happening (i.e., maybe being decisive is not the best option!), and
- be due to factors such as anxiety, pessimism, and identity issues known to be associated with indecisiveness.
Although this study was aimed at furthering research in the area, there are some key takeaways for practitioners:
- Students, and possibly everyone, who report that they have decided on a career path may not be comfortable with their decision. Their decision could well be a tentative one.
- Given the above, it is not safe to assume that career-decided individuals do not need access to career development services and supports.
- Being undecided, uncomfortable about one’s decision, and/or both may not be a problem. In fact, this discomfort and/or indecision may reflect that a person appreciates that both they and the world are changing.
Responses