A TAXONOMY OF DIFFICULTIES IN CAREER DECISION-MAKING

A general theoretical taxonomy of career decision-making difficulties, based on decision theory, has been developed. To examine the proposed taxonomy empirically, a questionnaire was constructed in which the va rious possible difficulties in the theoretical model were represented by respective statements. The questionnaire was administered to a samp le of 259 young Israeli adults who were at the beginning of their care er decision-making process and to an American sample of 304 university students. The observed relations among the 10 scales, which represent the 10 theoretical categories of difficulties, and those among the it ems within 2 selected categories, were similar in the 2 samples and co mpatible with the expected relations derived from the theoretical mode l. The implications for career counseling and research are discussed.