Relieving career anxiety and indecision: the role of undergraduate students’ perceived control and faculty affiliations

As educators and mentors, we often focus on helping undergraduate students make career decisions. However, there is also value in helping alleviate career anxiety and indecision, both of which impede decision-making and are not automatically resolved once a decision is made. This research examined the role of individual differences (age, gender, and perceived control) and learning environment variables (year in university, participation in an orientation program, and faculty affiliations) as predictors of undergraduates’ (n = 844) career-related anxiety and indecision. Traditional individual difference variables like age and gender had little effect whereas perceived control (primary and secondary) predicted lower levels of career anxiety and indecision. The outcomes were not influenced by environmental factors such as year in university or completion of an orientation program, but students’ self-reported faculty affiliation had significant effects. Students who were not affiliated with any specific faculty reported more indecision than students in arts, science, and professional faculties. Likewise, students in professional faculties had less career anxiety and career indecision than arts students. The implications of these results for potential interventions and future research are discussed.

[1]  N. Hall,et al.  Student teachers’ competence and career certainty: the effects of career anxiety and perceived control , 2007 .

[2]  R. Perry.  Perceived (Academic) Control and Causal Thinking in Achievement Settings. , 2003 .

[3]  C. Robert Pace,et al.  The Credibility of Student Self-Reports. , 1985 .

[4]  Feride Bacanli,et al.  Personality Characteristics as Predictors of Personal Indecisiveness , 2006 .

[5]  Lucy W. Gibson,et al.  AN INVESTIGATION OF CAREER DECIDEDNESS IN RELATION TO "BIG FIVE" PERSONALITY CONSTRUCTS AND LIFE SATISFACTION , 1999 .

[6]  D. Fuqua,et al.  Further Evidence for the Use of Career Subtypes in Defining Career Status. , 1990 .

[7]  S. Osipow.  Assessing Career Indecision , 1999 .

[8]  B. Soenens,et al.  Indecisiveness and High School Students' Career Decision-Making Process: Longitudinal Associations and the Mediational Role of Anxiety. , 2006 .

[9]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  Emotion in Education , 2007 .

[10]  Sherry A. Woosley,et al.  An Exploration of the Factors that Affect the Academic Success of College Sophomores. , 2005 .

[11]  Denise E. Saunders,et al.  Relation of Depression and Dysfunctional Career Thinking to Career Indecision , 2000 .

[12]  R. Pekrun.  The Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions: Assumptions, Corollaries, and Implications for Educational Research and Practice , 2006 .

[13]  A. K. Golin,et al.  The Personal, Career, and Learning Skills Needs of College Students. , 1992 .

[14]  N. Hall,et al.  Getting the Job: Attributional Retraining and the Employment Interview1 , 2009 .

[15]  M. Hardy.  Regression with dummy variables , 1993 .

[16]  Frederick T. L. Leong,et al.  Construct Validity of Career Indecision: Negative Personality Traits as Predictors of Career Indecision , 1996 .

[17]  Robert M. Orndorff,et al.  A Comparative Study of Declared and Undeclared College Students on Career Uncertainty and Involvement in Career Development Activities. , 1996 .

[18]  N. Fouad,et al.  Work and vocational psychology: theory, research, and applications. , 2007, Annual review of psychology.

[19]  Connie R. Wanberg,et al.  A Typology of Career Decision Status: Validity Extension of the Vocational Decision Status Model , 1992 .

[20]  M. Zeidner.  Test Anxiety in Educational Contexts: Concepts, Findings, and Future Directions , 2007 .

[21]  Joaquim Luís Coimbra,et al.  Psychological Separation and Dimensions of Career Indecision in Secondary School Students , 2000 .

[22]  J. L. Holland,et al.  Making vocational choices : a theory of vocational personalities and work environments , 1984 .

[23]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  Academic Control and Action Control in the Achievement of College Students: A Longitudinal Field Study. , 2001 .

[24]  R. Perry,et al.  A Review of Attributional Retraining Treatments: Fostering Engagement and Persistence in Vulnerable College Students , 2009 .

[25]  J. Z. Su.  The Study of the Education of Educators: A Profile of Teacher Education Students. , 1993 .

[26]  K. Taylor.  An investigation of vocational indecision in college students: Correlates and moderators , 1982 .

[27]  D. Fuqua,et al.  Relation of State and Trait Anxiety to Different Components of Career Indecision. , 1988 .

[28]  I. Ajzen,et al.  Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior , 1980 .

[29]  Robert W. Lent,et al.  Contextual supports and barriers to career choice: A social cognitive analysis. , 2000 .

[30]  M. Aldenderfer,et al.  Cluster Analysis. Sage University Paper Series On Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences 07-044 , 1984 .

[31]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Handbook of Emotions , 1993 .

[32]  A. K. Golin,et al.  Career Group Effects on Career Indecision, Career Maturity, and Locus of Control of Undergraduate Clients , 1993 .

[33]  Philip B. Ender,et al.  Career Choice Anxiety, Coping, and Perceived Control , 2002 .

[34]  P. Cavenagh,et al.  Becoming professional: when and how does it start? A comparative study of first‐year medical and law students in the UK , 2000, Medical education.

[35]  Duane Brown.  Career Choice and Development , 1984 .

[36]  J. Weisz,et al.  Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. , 1982 .

[37]  R. Flett,et al.  Influential Factors Moderating Academic Enjoyment/motivation and Psychological Well-Being for Maori University Students at Massey University , 2005 .

[38]  D. Super.  A life-span, life-space approach to career development , 1980 .

[39]  H. Rosin,et al.  An Examination of Gender Differences in Work-Family Conflict , 2005 .

[40]  B. Tabachnick,et al.  Using Multivariate Statistics , 1983 .

[41]  D. Barlow.  Unraveling the mysteries of anxiety and its disorders from the perspective of emotion theory. , 2000 .

[42]  Kent W. Smith,et al.  Survey Responses: An Evaluation of Their Validity , 1993 .

[43]  V. N. Gordon.  Career Decidedness Types: A Literature Review , 1998 .

[44]  J. C. Smart,et al.  Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research , 2001, Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research.

[45]  I. Gati,et al.  Emotional and personality-related aspects of persistent career decision-making difficulties , 2007 .

[46]  Judith A. Hall,et al.  Gender and emotion , 2008 .

[47]  N. Hall,et al.  Perceived (Academic) Control and Scholastic Attainment in Higher Education , 2007 .