Career Indecision and Self-Efficacy among Adolescents

Abstract

Three hundred and forty-one high school students completed measures of how confident they were in their ability to perform a variety of specific occupational tasks (task career self-efficacy), how decided they were on a career (career decidedness) and how easy it was for them to make independent decisions (indecisiveness). There were no significant differences between the gender groups on the measure of career decidedness, although females reported more difficulty in making decisions. There were significant correlations between some of the task career self-efficacy subscales and both career decidedness and indecisiveness. In particular females and males who were confident in their verbal interpersonal skills tended to be relatively decisive and relatively career-decided. A series of regression analyses indicated that the relationship between task career self-efficacy, indecisiveness and career decidedness was similar for females and males.