TOC
Osipow on the Career Decision Scale:
Some Comments
Fred W. Vondracek
W
hen I first met Sam Osipow 25 years ago, he was a
counseling psychologist and I was a graduate assis-
tant counselor in Penn State’s Division of Counseling.
Our paths have crossed often since then, and many things
have changed. Some things about Sam and his work, however,
have remained quite constant, and they teach us some import-
ant things about the development of instruments for use in
counseling.
First of all, the most successful instruments are those that fill
a need, and that are of tangible value to those who use them or
to those who benefit from their use. Of course, it is not always
easy to spot a real need or to fill it in some timely manner. Sam,
however, has had an uncanny “nose” for doing just that, not only
in the development of instruments but throughout his profes-
sional career, including the timely publication of Theories of Career
Development in 1968, and his subsequent recognition of the need
for a Journal of Vocational Behavior. As Sam tells us, his personal
career experiences played an important role in influencing his
creative choices. Without a doubt, however, it was his “hands
on” experience in career counseling that contributed to his astute
recognition of the need for an instrument to measure antecedents
of career indecision. Thus, Sam’s work in this area demonstrates
that the design and development of instruments for use in coun-
seling must be informed by a thorough understanding of the
counseling process and of the needs of counselors and counselees
alike.
The Career Decision Scale (CDS) has met an important need
experienced by counselors and educators. An equally impressive
measure of its success has been the large amount of research it
has generated. Much of that research, including that conducted
by my colleagues and myself, has been focused on using the CDS
to obtain a more differentiated measure of the antecedents of
career indecision. After all, having specific information about
whether indecision is due to external barriers or to an approach-
approach conflict does make a difference in counseling. Sam’s
reluctance to use factor scales for such differentiated scores is
understandable in view of the small number of items per scale
and the variable results obtained in a number of factor analytic
studies of the CDS.
Sam’s comments, however, suggest that he has not adequately
considered the reanalysis of seven factor analytic studies of the
CDS reported by Shimizu, Vondracek, Schulenberg, and
Hostetler (1988), which showed more significant similarities
among different solutions than had previously been assumed, or
the differences between using exploratory factor analysis on the
one hand, and confirmatory factor analysis on the other
(Schulenberg, Shimizu, Vondracek, & Hostetler, 1988). Confir-
JOURNAL OF COUNSELING & DEVELOPMENT l NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991
Electronic Journal: To print this article select page 71.
matory factor analysis yields a rigorous verdict concerning the fit
of a given data set to a theory-based specification. His comment
that the forthcoming study by Savickas and Jarjoura (1991),
(which used the CDS “as a type indicator”) may open up new
applications for the instrument, suggests that he agrees that a
more differentiated view of career indecision would be useful.
My colleagues and I have also suggested using the CDS in
developing a typology of indecision (Vondracek, Schulenberg, &
Hostetler, 1989), which would certainly help career counselors to
counsel career-undecided students more meaningfully.
Clearly, one confirmatory factor analysis may not be the defin-
itive solution. Nevertheless, it is known that career indecision
occurs for a variety of reasons. Knowing the degree of indecision,
as indicated by the CDS total score, provides a useful but limited
piece of information. It would be significantly more useful, how-
ever, to know more. For example, doing additional confirmatory
factor analyses of the CDS with different samples may serve to
strengthen and refine our current understanding of the structure
of indecision and the relative invariance of this structure in differ-
ent populations. If low reliability (because of few items per scale)
inhibits our use of factor analytically derived scales, writing addi-
tional items to reflect the (ultimately) confirmed factors may im-
prove reliability. By the same token, taking some items out of the
CDS may produce a “cleaner” set of subscales (see, for example,
Vondracek, Hostetler, Schulenberg, & Shimizu, 1990). In short,
there are ways in which the CDS could be improved further, and
I, for one, would like to encourage Sam to do just that.
REFERENCES
Osipow, S. H. (1968). Theories of career development. New York: Appleton.
Savickas, M. L., & Jarjoura D. (1991). The Career Decision Scale as a type
indicator. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38 (1) 85-90.
Schulenberg, J. E., Shimizu, K., Vondracek, F. W., & Hostetler, M. (1988).
The factor structure of the career indecision in junior and senior high
school students. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 33, 63-81.
Shimizu, K., Vondracek, F. W., Schulenberg, J. E., & Hostetler, M. (1988).
The factor structure of the career decision scale: Similarities across
selected studies. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 32, 213-225.
Vondracek, F. W., Hostetler, M., Schulenberg, J. E., & Shimizu, K. (1990).
Dimensions of career indecision. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 37 (1),
98-106.
Vondracek, F. W., Schulenberg, J., & Hostetler, M. (1989, March). A
typology of vocational indecision and implications for counseling. Paper
presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting,
San Francisco.
Fred W. Vondracek is a professor of human development at The Pennsylvania
State University, University Park. Correspondence regarding this article should
be sent to Fred W. Vondracek, The Pennsylvania State University, South 110
Henderson Building, University Park, PA 16802.
l VOL. 70 327