APPLICATIONS OF THE COPING WITH CAREER INDECISION INSTRUMENT WITH ADOLESCENTS

This article discusses the potential use of the Coping with Career Ind ecision (CCI; Larson, Heppner, Ham, & Dugan, 1988) instrument which id entifies subtypes of undecided students. The CCI was later refined by Larson, Toulouse, Ngumba, Fitzpatrick, and Heppner (1994) across four studies, extending the use of the CCI to gifted adolescents seeking he lp in career exploration. Data from 125 adolescents were examined with respect to their CCI scores on five additional career planning measur es: the Problem Solving Inventory (PSI; Heppner, 1988), the Career Dec ision Making Self-Efficacy-Short Form (CDMSE-SF; Betz, Taylor, & Klein , 1994), the Academic College Major Decidedness item from the Career D ecision Scale (CDS; Osipow, 1987), the Career Barriers Inventory-Short Form (CBI-SF; Swanson & Tokar, 1991), and the Positive Affect and Neg ative Affect scales from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Exp anded Form (PANAS-X; Watson & Clark, 1994). Factor analysis of the sco res revealed two underlying dimensions, personal agency and affective distress. Then, factor scores on both of these dimensions were generat ed for each participant and entered into a cluster analysis. The clust er procedure identified four groups based on their relationship to the se underlying dimensions: (a) Low Agency/High Distress, (b) High Agenc y/High Distress, (c) High Agency/Low Distress, and (d) Low Agency/Low Distress. Applications for career counselors working with adolescents and the specific utility of the CCI are presented.