Challenges and difficulties in career decision making: Their causes, and their effects on the process and the decision

Individuals are challenged by increasingly more career transitions in the 21st century. Each of these transitions entails making a career decision, typically by locating promising alternatives, collecting information about them, comparing the alternatives on the short list and choosing one. Finding the areas where individuals are experiencing difficulties in this process is important for helping them and facilitating their career decision making. The goal of the present review is to propose a taxonomy for analyzing, comparing, and classifying assessments of the career decision-making process in terms of three facets: (i) Antecedents – assessments of the challenges that may emerge prior to or during this process and cause difficulties, (ii) Effects of the challenges and difficulties on the process, namely, the individual's behavioral responses, and (iii) Effects on the decision, as reflected in individuals' career decision status and their feelings about the process and the outcome. Based on theoretical considerations and the constructs underlying the assessments, there are three categories of assessments in Antecedents: (1) Readiness includes assessments of dysfunctional beliefs about career decision making, career decision-making self-efficacy, willingness to engage in the process, and career indecisiveness; (2) Orientation includes assessments of career decision-making styles and profiles, ways of coping with career decision-making, and adaptability; and (3) Information includes assessments of difficulties that stem from feelings of Lack of information – about the self, the world of work, and how to make career decisions – or the Use of Information – unreliable information, internal conflicts, and external conflicts. The associations between Antecedents and their Effects on the Process and on the Decision are discussed. The psychometric properties of each assessment were evaluated, using the evidence-based assessment approach of Hunsley and Mash (2008). Inspecting and evaluating of the assessments show that most of them have a well-defined focus and evidence for acceptable reliability, but more evidence is needed for validity. The advantages of unidimensional/multidimensional and homogeneous/heterogeneous assessments are discussed. Ways of incorporating the assessments of the antecedents of career decision-making difficulties effectively into career counseling are suggested, to help career counselors better tailor their interventions to their clients' needs. The proposed categorization can also help researchers locate the most relevant career decision-making process-based assessments and decide how to use them to measure specific constructs.