Career Choice Anxiety, Coping, and Perceived Control

Extrapolating from D. H. Barlow (2000), the authors explored whether perceived control moderated the relation between coping with career indecision and choice anxiety among 126 women in low-level jobs. Analyses of the women's career indecision, coping, perceived control, and career choice anxiety scores through regression identified the moderator effect. Perceived control interacted with problem-focused coping to increase accountable variance in choice anxiety (p Studies confirm the association of choice anxiety and career indecision (Fuqua & Hartman, 1983; Fuqua, Seaworth, & Newman, 1987; O'Hare & Tamburri, 1986). These studies, however, are primarily of high school and college students. The association of career indecision and choice anxiety among out-of-school adults between ages the ages of 22 and 32 years in low-level jobs remains virtually unexamined. Yet, such adults are likely to make multiple occupational changes in the first several years after they leave school (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1998). The relation of career indecision and choice anxiety is important to counselors. Spokane (1991) has noted that career choice anxiety may lead some prospective clients to eschew career counseling and other clients to discontinue counseling prematurely. In other words, their anxiety may prevent them from the very actions that would relieve their indecision and reduce their anxiety. Inclusion of anxiety reduction in career decision-making interventions seems to enhance client career decision-making efforts but has not been shown to lower career choice anxiety in itself (Mendonca & Siess, 1976). Because choice anxiety seems to constrain the coping of some clients with career indecision, it is important to identify factors that may contribute to the relation between coping with career indecision and choice anxiety. Barlow's (2000) model of vulnerability for anxiety and depression suggests one factor-perceived control of one's career choice-that may elucidate the relationship. He proposed that repeatedly experiencing a low sense of control of an anxiety-invoking stimulus creates vulnerability for a heightened anxiety reaction to the stimulus. With repetitions, such low perceived control becomes an amplifier that acts as a moderator of the process occurring between exposure to the stimulus and ensuing anxiety, implicitly through coping and other variables. Extrapolating from Barlow, one would hypothesize that persons coping with career indecision who perceive control over their career-choice context, both the personal and environmental facets, are likely to experience lower choice anxiety as they increase their level of coping. Individuals who perceive low control, in contrast, would not be expected to reduce their choice anxiety as much, if at all. A participant's comments about perceived control to the first author weeks after the study suggest what it meant for the participants. She said, I get stressed not from deciding but from everything around it. I have so much stress from having to think of rent, furniture, and food. I need this and that. Of course it would be easier to decide if everything else were taken care of. Barlow's (2000) model is consistent with the conclusion of Taylor (1982). From her review of studies of the correlates of career indecision among college students, Taylor concluded that students' internal locus of control-an enduring disposition to feel control over one's various contexts-moderates their efforts to resolve career indecision. Moreover, it seems consistent with the recent findings of Luzzo, James, and Luna (1996). They reported that strengthening the perceived control of students over their career choice increased the level of their career exploration relative to students whose perceived control was not strengthened. …