Development and validation of the Career Factors Inventory.

Abstract

Department of Educational PsychologyUniversity of UtahThe Career Factors Inventory (CFI) was developed in this article. This is a multidimensionalmeasure of career indecision containing 2 information factors (Need for Career Information andNeed for Self-Knowledge) and 2 personal-emotional factors (Career Choice Anxiety and Gen-eralized Indecisiveness). A rationale and corresponding descriptions for each scale were developedand the structure of the CFI across 2 samples was tested with confirmatory factor analyses.Reliability and concurrent validity analyses were conducted, and the CFI was empiricallycompared with career decision and other related scales. Suggestions for Attribution x Treatmentinteraction research were presented, along with possible counseling applications.The effectiveness of career counseling interventions hasbeen established (Oliver & Spokane, 1988; Spokane & Oliver,1983), but the that lead to effective change and thedifferential effectiveness of interventions for different clientsubgroups is not fully understood. In order to gain a clearerunderstanding of career process issues and to improve theefficacy of career intervention outcomes, investigators willneed to explicate interactions between attributes and treat-ments (Fretz, 1981; Oliver & Spokane, 1988). In a discussionof treatment parameters, Fretz (1981) concluded that there isa to consider the distinctive effects of content domainssuch as occupational information, self-information, and in-formation and decision-making processes (pp. 83-84). Heidentified content domain as one of the more promisingparameters on which treatments can be expected to havedistinctive and additive effects. Similarly, several authors(Campbell & Cellini, 1981; Rounds & Tinsley, 1984) havepointed to the need for diagnostic classification of careerclients as a basis for identifying different client subtypes andevaluating the differential effectiveness of particular interven-tions.Career indecision is a client problem that is applicable to adifferential diagnostic approach. Career indecision is a mul-tidimensional problem (Hartman, Fuqua, & Jenkins, 1986),and individuals who are undecided about career plans repre-sent a number of different subtypes (Crites, 1981; Gordon,1984; Holland & Holland, 1977; Jones & Chenery, 1980;Larson, Heppner, Ham, & Dugan, 1988; Osipow, 1983). Twointervention outcome studies that have examined the inter-We thank John White for his contribution to the development ofthe original instrument, Constance Google for her assistance withdata analysis, Jeff Chartrand for his assistance with figure graphics,and the reviewers for their helpful comments.Correspondence concerning this article and requests for permissionto use the Career Factors Inventory should be addressed to Judy M.Chartrand, Department of Psychology, Box 2018, 810 West FranklinStreet, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia23284.action between subtypes and treatments reported differentialoutcome gains based on indecision subtype (Barak & Freidkes,1981; Jones & Chenery, 1980). More studies of this type areneeded for progress to continue in the development of careerindecision interventions (Larson et al., 1988; Slaney, 1988a).An important step in extending this line of research is thedevelopment of multidimensional career indecision assess-ment tools. Efforts to construct such instruments have re-sulted in the development of two multifactorial career deci-sion scales (Jones & Chenery, 1980; Osipow, Carney, Winer,Yanico, & Koschier, 1976) and several scales measuring re-lated constructs, including vocational identity (Holland,Daiger, & Power, 1980), self-concept crystallization (Barrett& Tinsley, 1977a), decision-making self-esteem (Barrett &Tinsley, 1977b), decision-making self-efficacy (Taylor & Betz,1983), and decision-making style (Harren, 1979). Only theCareer Decision Scale (CDS) and the Vocational DecisionScale (VDS) are reviewed in this article, as these instrumentswere designed to measure multiple dimensions of career in-decision.Jones and Chenery (1980) constructed the VDS using arational-empirical approach. They posited a three-dimen-sional model of vocational decision status consisting of levelof career decidedness, comfort with career decidedness, andreasons for indecision. The 38-item VDS was then constructedwith single items for the comfort and decidedness dimensionsand 36 items for the reasons dimension. An orthogonal ex-ploratory factor analysis of the reasons dimension yieldedthree significant factors totaling 23 items and accounting for65% of the variance. These factors were labeled Self-Uncer-tainty, Choice/Work Salience, and Transitional Self.Recently, Jones (1989) developed the Career Decision Pro-file, a revised version of the VDS. In this instrument one itemwas added to both the comfort and decidedness dimensions,and the reasons dimension was restructured to include fourfactors: Lack of Self-Clarity, Lack of Occupational-Educa-tional Information, Indecisiveness, and Choice-Work Sali-ence. The reasons factors were extracted from a principalcomponent analysis designed to locate up to seven factors491