Assessing and changing career decision-making self-efficacy expectations

Assessing and Changing Career DecisionMaking Self-Efficacy Expectations Garrett J. McAuliffe, Ed.D. Old Dominion University The presence of internal barriers which impede effective career decision-making may be a significant factor in determining whether or not an undecided individual receives benefits from career counseling (Crites, 1981; Isaacson, 1985). These personal-emotional barriers may be globally defined as attitudes about oneself and the world which deter a person from making and enacting sound career plans. Individuals who experience these barriers are sometimes called "indecisive", in contrast to their being simply "undecided" (e.g., Salamone, ~ 1982; Van Matre & Cooper, 1984). A variety of constructs and corresponding assessment instruments have been developed which specify the nature of these internal barriers. They have included goal instability (Robbins & Patton, 1985), career choice anxiety (Chartrand, Robbins, Morrill, & Boggs, 1990), weak vocational identity (Holland, Gottfredson, & Power, 1980) and poor problem-solving (Larson, Heppner, Ham, & Dugan, 1988). Recent research (Fuqua, Newman, & Seaworth, 1988; Larson, Heppner, Ham, & Dugan, 1988; Lucas & Epperson, 1988; McAuliffe, Pickering, & Calliotte, 1992) has shown that between 8.5% and 21% of career-undecided individuals may experience sufficient barriers to make special intervention necessary. Savickas (1990), in his review of the indecisiveness literature, concluded that indecisive individuals may require "personal counseling . . . to deal with psychological blocks to decision-making, reduce anxiety, and increase problem-solving competence" (p. 125). Despite the seeming importance of this attitudinal dimension in good career decision-making, career counseling practice generally emphasizes the use of rational, information-oriented strategies which Address correspondence to Garrett J. McAuliffe, College of Education, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529. Journal of Career Development, Vol. 19(1), Fall 1992 @ 1992 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 25 26 J o u r n a l of Career Development are aimed at generating self-and occupational information. Gelatt (1989) recently described the limitations of simple rational decisionmaking models. He suggested that they do not account for the critical influence of emotional factors and contradictory information as crucial components of the decision-making process for many individuals. While the rational approach may help the majority of undecided persons, the indecisive individual may need to specifically alter attitudes that hinder his/her ability to use such information for career planning. Further definition of these factors and the development of practical counseling strategies which are targeted at them seem to be warranted at this time. A promising construct which describes personal-emotional barriers to effective career decision-making is self-efficacy. This construct has the dual advantage of being both soundly based in social cognitive theory and of providing for explicit counseling strategies for change (Bandura 1977; 1986). Self-efficacy expectations can be defined as beliefs in one's ability to successfully perform a given behavior which is required to produce certain outcomes. Self-efficacy has been applied to the career domain, under the assumption that efficacy expectations affect occupational decisions and achievements. For example, Betz and Hackett (1981) and Lent, Brown, and Larkin (1986) demonstrated the influence of self-efficacy on the range of career options that an individual is willing to consider and the degree of interest shown in them. This research suggests that low self-efficacy limits career aspirations. A potentially fruitful application of the self-efficacy notion lies in the process of career decision-making itself. Career decision-making self-efficacy can be described as individuals' beliefs about their ability to enact the behaviors required for deciding on and enacting career choices. Taylor and Betz (1983) found that career decision-making self-efficacy expectations are significantly related to career indecision. Robbins (1985) further found career decision-making self-efficacy to be significantly related to self-esteem, general anxiety, and vocational identity, and Taylor and Popma (1990) reported career decision-making self-efficacy to be related to locus of control. As the construct continues to be defined, a number of authors (e.g., Lent & Hackett, 1987; Maddux, Stanley, & Manning, 1987) have suggested that greater attention be paid to actual treatments of low career decision-making self-efficacy. It is the purpose of this paper to describe counseling practices which might improve self-efficacy expectations for the behaviors re- Garrett J. McAuliffe 27 quired for career decision-making. Such practices include helping clients to change beliefs by their experiencing successful performance of targeted behaviors and recognizing their role in that success. Another example of an efficacy-oriented counseling practice is promoting vicarious learning of desired attitudes and behaviors, for example, by means of exposing clients to models who have successfully engaged in targeted career decision-making behaviors. It is hoped that counselors in schools, colleges and other settings will be encouraged to assess clients' career decision-making self-efficacy expectations, and to subsequently help them to improve those expectations, while they continue to provide the traditional information-oriented interventions as needed. A s s e s s i n g Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Assessment of the client's specific career decision-making self-efficacy expectations should precede intervention. Both the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale (CDMSES; Taylor & Betz, 1983) and the Career Confidence Scale (CCS; Pickering, Calliotte, & McAuliffe, 1990) were designed to assess career decision-making self-efficacy. Both ask individuals to report confidence in their ability to enact a variety of career decision-making behaviors, although the specific questions differ. Either instrument should be useful in counseling. The CDMSES asks individuals to rate beliefs in their ability to enact each of 51 career decision-making tasks on a scale of 0 (no confidence) to 9 (complete confidence). The CDMSES has an internal consistency ranging from .88 to .97 (Robbins, 1985; Taylor & Bets, 1988). Validity has been demonstrated both by relationships between the CDMSES and constructs such as self-esteem (Robbins, 1985), beliefs about specific occupations (Taylor & Popma, 1990), and career indecision (Taylor & Betz, 1983). The CCS is a 46-item experimental measure of career decision-making self-efficacy. Scores on each of its subscales have been found to be significantly related to associated constructs such as goal instability, career choice anxiety, generalized indecisiveness, need for self-knowledge, and self-esteem (McAuliffe, Pickering, & Cal (...truncated)