Facilitating Career Decision-Making

1. Facilitating Career Decision-Making Itamar Gati The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2. In this presentation, I will • Discuss the decision-theory viewpoint • Present the PIC 3-stage cdmmodel • Describe the CDDQ –theoretical basis and practical utility • Introduce the CDSQ – cdm stylemodel and Q • Demonstrate MBCD - Making Better Career Decisions • Review research and demonstrate applications • Highlight the unique features of our approach

3. Question to you - • What word was used in this presentation (if I am careful enough) only twice?

4. But first, how did I get here and why? • age 9 Immigration to Israel • 18 – 21 compulsory military service • 21 – 24 undergraduate studies (psy+econ) • 22 – 24 research assistant of D. Kahneman • 24 – 27 MA, Judgment and decision making • 27 – 30 PhD Similarity, Amos Tversky • 24 – 30 research associate, Hadassah Career Counseling Institute • 30 – 31 Fulbright Post Doc – Stanford Uni • 31 – assistant prof – to professor, Hebrew Uni

5. Unique features of career decisions • Quantity of Information: Often large N of alternatives and factors, within-occupation variance,  information is practically unlimited • Quality of Information:soft (i.e., verbal), subjective, fuzzy, inaccurate, biased • Uncertainty about:the individual’s future preferences, future career options, unpredictable changes and opportunities, probability of implementing choice • Non-cognitive Factors:emotional and personality-related factors, necessity for compromise, actual or perceived social barriers and biases

6. From decision theory to career counseling practice • Many factors contribute to the complexity and difficulties involved in career decision-making The claim: • Career counseling may be viewed as decision counseling, which aims at facilitating the clients' decision-making process, and promotes better career decisions

7. If so evident, why was not decision-theory adopted until now? Because • Normative decision theory is – • too rational • too arbitrary • too quantitative • exceeds human’s information-processing capability • Descriptive decision theory is not helpful either – it mainly documents human weakness • heuristics, biases, and fallacies • limited information-processing capabilities

8. The Proposed Approach – • By adopting decision theory and adapting it to the unique features of career decisions, theoretical knowledge can be translated into practical interventions to facilitate individuals’ career choices • Specifically, we suggest focusing on a prescriptiveapproach, and designing systematic procedures that can help individuals make better career decisions (not necessarily rational ones!)

9. The 3 components of needs assessment are: • the individual’s stage in the cdm process(“where”) • the focuses of the individual’s cdmdifficulties (“what”) • the individual’s cdmstyle (“who”)

10. I - Stages in the career decision-making process The PIC model (Gati & Asher, 2001) separates the career decision- making process into 3 distinct stages: - Prescreening - In-depth exploration - Choice

11. Prescreening • Goal: Locating a small set (about 7) of promising alternatives that deserve further, in-depth exploration • Method: Sequential Elimination • Locate and prioritize relevant aspects or factors • Explicate within-aspect preferences • Eliminate incompatible alternatives • Check list of promising alternatives • Outcome: A list of verified promising alternatives worth further, in-depth exploration

12. Steps in Sequential Elimination Locating and prioritizing aspects or factors Explicating within-factor preferences in the most important factor not yet considered • Eliminating incompatible alternatives yes • Too many promising alternatives? no • This is the recommended list of occupations • worth further, in-depth exploration

13. A Schematic Presentation of theSequential Elimination Process (within-aspects, across-alternatives) Potential Alternatives Aspects a (most important) b (second in importance) c . n 1 2 3 4 . . . . N Promising Alternatives

14. Final step - Sensitivity Analysis The Goal: Verifying the “quality” of the promising list The Method: • An alternative (compensatory-model-based) search • “why not” • “almost compatible” options • “what if” • “similar alternatives”

15. In-depth exploration • Goal: Locating alternatives that are not only promising but indeed suitable for the individual • Method: collecting additional information, focusing on one promising alternative at a time: • Is the occupation INDEED suitable for me? • verifying compatibility with one’s preferences in the most important aspects • considering compatibility within the less important aspects • Am I suitable for the occupation? • probability of actualization: previous studies, grades, achievements • fit with the core aspects of the occupation • Outcome: A few most suitable alternatives (about 3-4)

16. A Schematic Presentation of the In-depth Exploration Stage(within-alternative, across aspects) Promising Alternatives 1 2 3 4 5 6 4 5 2 Suitable Alternatives

17. Choice • Goal: Choosing the most suitable alternative, and rank-ordering additional, second-best alternatives • Method: • comparing and evaluating the suitable alternatives • pinpointing the most suitable one • Am I likely to activate it? • if not - selecting second-best alternative(s) • if yes - Am I confident in my choice? • if not: Return to In-depth exploration stage • if yes: Done! • Outcome: The best alternative or a rank-order of the best alternatives

18. II - Career Decision-Making Difficulties • Among the first steps in helping individuals make a career decision is locating the focuses of the difficulties they face in the decision-making process • Relying on decision theory, Gati, Krausz, and Osipow (1996) proposed a taxonomy for describing career decision-making difficulties

19. During the Process Prior to Engaging in the Process Lack of Readiness due to InconsistentInformation due to Lack of Information about Lack of motivation Indeci-siveness Dysfunc-tionalbeliefs Cdmprocess Self Occu- pations Unreliable Info. Internal conflicts Externalconflicts Ways of obtaining info. Possible Focuses of Career Decision-Making Difficulties (Gati, Krausz, & Osipow, 1996)

20. Career Decision-Making Difficulties This taxonomy was based on: • the stage in the decision-making process during which the difficulties typically arise • the similarity between the sources of the difficulties • the effects that the difficulties may have on the process and the relevant type of intervention

21. The Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) • The Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) was developed to test this taxonomy and serve as a means for assessing individuals’ career decision-making difficulties • Cronbach Alpha internal consistency estimate of the total CDDQscore: .92 – .95 • For additional information – see www.cddq.org--- the CDDQ is free

22. Empirical Structure of CDM Difficulties (N = 10,000) Lack of motivation General indecisiveness Dysfunctional beliefs Lack of info. about self Lack of info about process LoI about occupations LoI about addition sources of help Unreliable Information Internal conflicts External conflicts

23. Sample items from the CDDQ

24. The Four Stages of Interpretation • Ascertaining Credibility,using validityitems and the time required to fill out the questionnaire • Estimating Differentiationbased on the standard deviation of the 10 difficulty-scale scores • Locating thesalient,moderate, or negligibledifficulties,based onthe individual's absolute and relative scale scores • Determining the confidence in the feedback and the need to addreservationsto it (based on doubtful credibility, partial differentiation, or low informativeness)

25. The 4 Stages of Interpretation 1 Not Credible Evaluating Credibility Doubtful Credible Estimating Differentiation 2 Low Questionable High 3 Locate Salient Difficulties Aggregate Reasons to Add Reservation (RAR) Compute Informativeness (B /W ) B/W < 1 RAR = 3 B/W > 1 RAR ≤ 2 Add Reservation to Feedback Receives Feedback No Feedback 4

26. Four Studies -for validating the proposed interpretation Method • Participants: 15-30 career counselors and 25-80 graduate counseling students • Questionnaires – including CDDQ responses: - in Study 1 and 4 – all possible responses; - in Studies 2 and 3 – responses of 16 actual clients • Results: • High similarity within-groups as well as between counselors’ and students’ judgments High similarity between the experts’ judgments and the proposed algorithm at each stage

29. Among the salient difficulties is “lack of information about the career decision-making process” (4) Three Levels of Difficulties(negligible, moderate, salient difficulty) in the Ten Difficulty Categories and the Four Groups (N = 6192; H-Hebrew, E-English, p-paper and pencil, I-Internet)

30. The distribution of types of feedback in the four groups

31. Conclusions • The incorporation of a middle level of discriminationincreases the usefulness of the feedback and decreases the chances and implications of potential errors • Addingreservationswhen appropriate is essential for providing meaningful feedback and decreasing the chances of misleading conclusions

33. III – Career Decision-Making Styles • Diagnosing the client’s career decision-making style is important in order to “tailor” the career-counseling intervention to his or her unique characteristics • Previous research often did not take into consideration the complexity and variety of aspects related to the decision process and classified decision-styles based only on a single, most dominant characteristic (e.g., rational vs. intuitive decision-makers)

34. Goals • Developing a multidimensional model for describing career decision-making styles, based on the assumption that decision-making styles should be described using several dimensions simultaneously (i.e., using patterns of defining profiles) • Developing the Career Decision-making Styles Questionnaire (CDSQ) for testing the model and enabling a more accurate diagnosis of individual’s career decision-making style • Empirically deriving a typology based on cluster analysis of the CDSQ profiles from a large sample of individuals

35. Previous Research 1. 39 labels used for describing decision-making styles were located 2. In light of the high resemblance among some of them (e.g., logical [Arroba, 1977], rational [Harren, 1979], active-planning [Jepsen, 1974], systematic [Johnson, 1978]), these 39 types were narrowed down to 12 prototypes : rational, perfectionist, procrastinator, searching for tools, satisfying, hesitant, impulsive, fatalist, intuitive, dependent, rebellious, and pleasing.

36. Derivation of the 11 Dimensions 3. Comparing the 12 prototypes in terms of their common and distinctive characteristics allowed us to uncover the various characteristics differentiating among them 4. From this list we derived 11 basic dimensions relevant for characterizing individuals' cdm styles. Each dimension represents an attribute on which individuals can be characterized along a continuum on a bipolar scale: e.g., on the dimension of pattern of information processing individuals can be characterized from "analytical" to "holistic";desire to please others – "high" to "low".

37. The 11 Proposed Dimensions • Information processing (analytic vs. holistic) • Information gathering (much vs. little) • Amount of effort invested in the process (much vs. little) • Consultation with others (frequent vs. rare) • Aspiration for an "ideal occupation" (high vs. low) • Willingness to compromise (high vs. low) • Locus of control (internal vs. external) • Procrastination in entering the process (high vs. low) • Speed of making the final decision (fast vs. slow) • Dependence on others (high vs. low) • Desire to please others (high vs. low)

38. The Career-Decision-making Style Questionnaire (CDSQ) • 44 statements (4 items x 11 dimensions) • Response scale: 1 – Strongly disagree to7 –Strongly agree • The CDSQ is embedded in career-related self-help Internet sites KIVUNIM.COM(Hebrew), CDDQ.ORG(English) • 3 Development samples (N=230, 404, 411) • Fourth sample - 479 subjects

39. Future Directionshttp://www.kivunim.com An Israeli website in Hebrew, designed for assisting deliberating individuals in making their career decisions. It is a public service and is offered free of charge

40. Results – (Items) Scale Reliabilities: • median - .80, range .73 – .85 Factor analysis: • 10 factors • Accounted-for Variance = .65 • 2 dimensions were included in one factor(Speed of making the final decision; Procrastination) • Two items loaded higher on a “neighbor factor” (Information-processing; effort invested) Cluster analysis: • Accounted-for Variance = .81 • Items of 7 dimension clustered perfectly (4/4)4 dimension – 3/4 items

41. Results - Typology

42. Conclusions • The proposed and tested 11 dimensions can be used to characterize individuals' career decision-making styles • Using the CDSQ, homogeneous groups of clients with similar career decision-making styles can be empirically identified; creating a novel and more refined multi-dimensional typology of decision-making styles

43. Implications for Counseling • The CDSQ allows a more accurate diagnosis of the counselees' career decision-making styles, thus better “tailoring” the counseling intervention to the unique needs of individuals and groups with different characteristics • The CDSQ allows individuals to learn about their career decision-making style and thus to consider adopting more desirable strategies

44. So far, I reviewed 3 components of client’s needs assessment (the 3 “W”s) : • The individual’s stage in the cdm process (“Where”) • The focuses of the individual’s cdm difficulties (“What”) • The individual’s cdm style (“Who”) So, what’s next? • Some demonstrations of how can the decision-making approach be implemented in order to actually facilitate clients’ cdm

45. Specifically,if career decision-making requires collectinga vast amount of information, and if complex information-processing is needed, • we must then utilize the best available resource: Career counselors’ expert knowledge, that canbe elicited and transformed into Information and Communication Technology-based systems • Indeed,- The computer-assisted career guidance systems, based on a decision-theory model, can help overcome human’s cognitive limitations - There are several computer-assisted career guidance systems available today on the Internet

46. MBCD Making Better Career Decisions MBCD is an Internet-based career planning system that is a unique combination of • a career-information system • a decision-making support system • an expert system Based on the rationale of the PIC model, MBCDisdesigned to help deliberating individuals make better career decisions