Facilitating Career Decision-Making

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Facilitating Career Decision-Making

• Itamar Gati
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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In this presentation, I will

• Discuss the decision-theory viewpoint
• Present the PIC 3-stage cdm model
• Describe the CDDQ theoretical basis and
  practical utility
• Introduce the CDSQ cdm style model and Q
• Demonstrate MBCD - Making Better Career Decisions
• Review research and demonstrate applications
• Highlight the unique features of our approach

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Question to you -

• What word was used in this presentation (if I am
  careful enough) only twice?

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But first, how did I get here and why?

• age 9 Immigration to Israel
• 18 21 compulsory military service
• 21 24 undergraduate studies (psyecon)
• 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

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Unique features of career decisions

• Quantity of Information Often large N of
  alternatives and factors, within-occupation
  variance, ? information is practically unlimited
• Quality of Informationsoft (i.e., verbal),
  subjective, fuzzy, inaccurate, biased
• Uncertainty aboutthe individuals future
  preferences, future career options, unpredictable
  changes and opportunities, probability of
  implementing choice
• Non-cognitive Factorsemotional and
  personality-related factors, necessity for
  compromise, actual or perceived social barriers
  and biases

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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

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If so evident, why was not decision-theory
adopted until now?

• Because
• Normative decision theory is
• too rational
• too arbitrary
• too quantitative
• exceeds humans information-processing
  capability
• Descriptive decision theory is not helpful either
  it mainly documents human weakness
• heuristics, biases, and fallacies
• limited information-processing capabilities

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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
  prescriptive approach, and designing systematic
  procedures that can help individuals make better
  career decisions (not necessarily rational ones!)

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The 3 components of needs assessment are

• the individuals stage in the cdm
  process(where)
• the focuses of the individuals cdm difficulties
  (what)
• the individuals cdm style (who)

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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
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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

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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
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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
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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

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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 ones 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)

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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
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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

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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

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Possible Focuses of Career Decision-Making
Difficulties (Gati, Krausz, Osipow, 1996)
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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

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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 CDDQ score .92 .95
• For additional information see
  www.cddq.org--- the CDDQ is free

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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
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Sample items from the CDDQ
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The Four Stages of Interpretation

1. Ascertaining Credibility, using validity items
   and the time required to fill out the
   questionnaire
2. Estimating Differentiation based on the standard
   deviation of the 10 difficulty-scale scores
3. Locating the salient, moderate, or negligible
   difficulties, based on the individual's absolute
   and relative scale scores
4. Determining the confidence in the feedback and
   the need to add reservations to it (based on
   doubtful credibility, partial differentiation, or
   low informativeness)

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

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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)
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The distribution of types of feedback in the four
groups
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Conclusions

• The incorporation of a middle level of
  discrimination increases the usefulness of the
  feedback and decreases the chances and
  implications of potential errors
• Adding reservations when appropriate is essential
  for providing meaningful feedback and decreasing
  the chances of misleading conclusions

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III Career
Decision-Making Styles

• Diagnosing the clients 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)

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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
  individuals career decision-making style
• Empirically deriving a typology based on cluster
  analysis of the CDSQ profiles from a large sample
  of individuals

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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.

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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".

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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)

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The Career-Decision-making Style Questionnaire
(CDSQ)

• 44 statements (4 items x 11 dimensions)
• Response scale 1 Strongly disagree to
  7 Strongly agree
• The CDSQ is embedded in career-related self-help
  Internet sites KIVUNIM.COM (Hebrew), CDDQ.ORG
  (English)
• 3 Development samples (N230, 404, 411)
• Fourth sample - 479 subjects

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Future Directions http//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

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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

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Results - Typology
G7 G6 G5 G4 G3 G2 G1 Group
n64 n87 n47 n65 n79 n77 n38 DIMENSION
5.09 5.35 3.45 5.17 4.76 4.91 3.65 Information-processing
5.79 5.94 3.43 5.83 5.34 5.21 3.94 Information gathering
5.72 6.32 4.62 5.41 6.05 6.06 4.82 Amount of effort invested
5.83 5.64 5.33 4.02 6.26 5.58 5.64 Consultation with others
2.14 2.56 3.39 2.25 3.12 2.01 4.12 "ideal occupation"
3.03 3.60 5.12 3.33 4.91 4.81 3.08 Willingness to compromise
5.58 5.61 5.26 6.10 4.91 5.24 5.59 Locus of control
4.38 2.47 3.02 5.42 2.25 3.24 3.73 Speed of making decision
4.97 3.53 2.58 5.78 2.66 5.10 4.21 Procrastination
6.40 6.19 5.76 6.47 3.89 5.60 6.16 Dependence
5.99 5.94 5.79 5.69 4.26 4.72 5.88 Desire to please others
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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

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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

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So far, I reviewed

• 3 components of clients needs assessment (the 3
  Ws)
• The individuals stage in the cdm process
  (Where)
• The focuses of the individuals cdm difficulties
  (What)
• The individuals cdm style (Who)
• So, whats next?
• Some demonstrations of how can the
  decision-making approach be implemented in order
  to actually facilitate clients cdm

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• 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 humans cognitive
  limitations
• - There are several computer-assisted
  career guidance systems available today on the
  Internet

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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, MBCD
  is designed to help deliberating individuals make
  better career decisions

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However,

• Although Internet-based, career-related
  self-help sites are flourishing,
• these sites, as well as stand-alone
  computer-assisted career-guidance systems, vary
  greatly in quality
• Therefore,
• it is very important to investigate the
  utility and validity of these self-help programs

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But, Making
Better Career
Decisions

• Does it really work?

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Criteria for Testing the Benefits of Making
Better Career Decisions

• Examine users' perceptions of MBCD
•  
• Examine changes in users decision status
•  
• Examine perceived benefits
•  
• Locate factors that contribute to these variables

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MBCDs Effect (Cohens d) on Reducing Career
Decision-Making Difficulties (Gati, Saka,
Krausz, 2003)
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Decision Status Before and After the Dialogue
with MBCD
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Predictive Validity of MBCD(Gati, Gadassi,
Shemesh, 2006)

• Design Comparing the Occupational Choice
  Satisfaction (OCS) of two groups six years after
  using MBCD and getting a list of occupations
  recommended for further exploration
• those whose present occupation was included in
  MBCDs recommended list (44)
• those whose present occupation was not included
  in MBCDs recommended list (56)

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Method

• Participants
• The original sample included 123 clients who
  used MBCD in 1997, as part of their counseling at
  the Hadassah Career-Counseling Institute
• Out of the 73 that were located after six
  years, 70 agreed to participate in the follow-up
  44 women (64) and 26 men (36),aged 23 to 51
  (mean 28.4, SD 5.03)

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Frequencies of Occupational Choice Satisfaction
by Acceptance and Rejection of MBCD's
Recommendations (Gati, Gadassi, Shemesh, 2006)
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Alternative Explanations were not supported

• Differences in the lengths of the lists
• No difference was found in the OCS between
  clients whose list included 15 or fewer
  occupations and clients whose list included more
  than 15 occupations
• Clients who accepted MBCDs recommendations are
  more compliant, and therefore more inclined to
  report a high level of satisfaction
• However, following the compensatory-model-base
  d recommendations did not contribute to the OCS

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Gender Differences in Directly and
Indirectly derived Preferred Occupations (279
Women 79 Men, Mean Age23 Gadassi Gati,
2007)
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Summary of Major Findings

• PIC is compatible with peoples intuitive ways of
  making decisions (Gati Tikotzki, 1989)
• Most users report progress in the career
  decision-making process (Gati, Kleiman, Saka,
  Zakai, 2003)
• Satisfaction was also reported among those who
  did not progress in the process
• Users are goal-directed the closer they are
  to making a decision, the more satisfied they are
  with MBCD
• The list of recommended occupations are not
  gender-type biased (Gadassi Gati, 2007)

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What I did not review today

• Career compromises framings and their
  implications
• The assessment of career-related preference
  crystallization (based on the aspects-based
  approach)
• Career indecisiveness (i.e., emotional and
  personality related career decision-making
  difficulties)
• Core aspects that capture the essence of
  occupations
• Dysfunctional beliefs which, why, when

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In Conclusion Features of our Approach

• Prescreening is essential when the number of
  potential alternatives (e.g., occupations,
  majors, jobs) is large
• Instead of focusing on occupations (alternatives)
  we suggest to focus on aspects or characteristic
  of the options
• Instead of the snap-shot static assessments
  of vocational interests (e.g., the 3-highest
  RIASEC Hollands code), use for prescreening a
  wide range of factors aspects elicited by a
  dynamic, interactive process

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In Conclusion Features of our Approach (cont.)

• From the viewpoint of the individual, this
  enables - Differentiating between relative
  importance of factors, the optimal level, and
  the willingness to compromise- Assessing the
  individuals preference crystallization (does
  s/he knows what s/he is looking for)
• With respect to occupations, this enables-
  Characterizing occupations in terms of a range
  of levels, representing the within-occupation
  variance - Highlighting the essence of the
  occupation (using the core aspects)

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We believe that . . .

• Career-related assessments can and has to be
  useful both in self-help and in personal,
  face-to-face counseling situations
• Computers can and should be used not only for
  scoring (and arbitrary feedback), but also for
  monitoring a dynamic interaction and providing
  flexible interpretations (including
  reservations)
• Experts knowledge can and should be elicited,
  and then transformed to design and improve
  interpretive feedbacks on assessments

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We also believe that . . .

• Career choices are the outcome of decision-making
  processes therefore, career counseling is, in
  fact, decision counseling
• Decision theory can be translated into practical
  interventions aimed at facilitating individuals
  career decision-making
• The goal should be promoting a systematic
  decision making process not a rational one

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Finally, we also believe that . . .

• Career-related assessments can be transformed
  into user-friendly Internet-based systems, which
  can also be incorporated into counseling
  interventions
• Interpretive feedback is important but has to be
  tailored and validated
• Theory-based interventions should always be
  empirically tested for theoretical validity as
  well as practical effectiveness

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• And what was the word I used (hopefully) only
  twice?

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To conclude

• From the presented perspective, the goal of
  career counseling is
• facilitating
• making better career decisions

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www.cddq.org itamar.gati_at_huji.ac.il
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end

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