Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Career Indecision
Jesus Alfonso Datu
De La Salle University, Philippines
jesus.datu@dlsu.edu.ph
With the increasing number of clients who are undecided about specific
career paths, counselors are confronted with newer tasks in providing appropriate
vocational guidance services. Though a good number of studies were carried out
to look at predictors of career indecision such as emotional intelligence (Di Fabio
& Palazzeschi, 2009), personality traits (Borges & Savickas, 2002; Di Fabio &
Palazzeschi, 2009; Starica, 2011), anxiety (Campagna, 2007; Kelly & Pulver,
2003), career locus of control (Starica, 2011), academic self-esteem (Starica,
2011), parenting behaviors (Dietrich & Kracke, 2009) and career decision-
making self-efficacy (Creed, Patton & Bartrum, 2004), there is still a marked
Philippine Journal of Counseling Psychology (2013), Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 71-84.
© Philippine Association for Counselor Education, Research, and Supervision (PACERS)
ISSN 1655-1702
PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY
Datu : Career Indecision
Career Indecision
Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions
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PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY
Datu : Career Indecision
Method
Research Design
Forty three first year college students whose ages range from 16-18
(M=17.5) were recruited from one class in a private university in Metro Manila.
They are all taking Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Communications
Engineering. Although they have enrolled in an engineering course, most of them
are still unsure whether they are on the right career track. Prior to the
implementation of the intervention, they held some negative thought patterns
about the course they have undertaken.
Instruments
There are three instruments that were utilized in the current study. Both
quantitative and qualitative measures were included to depict a clear picture of
career indecision as perceived by the participants. These include the following:
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Datu : Career Indecision
Procedure
Results
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Table 1.
Descriptive Statistics of the Subjects’ Career Indecision before the Intervention
Mean N Standard deviation
Comfort 5.02 43 1.57
Self-Clarity 5.75 43 1.68
Occupational Knowledge and Training 4.90 43 1.30
Decisiveness 4.58 43 1.67
Career Choice Importance 3.19 43 1.79
Career Indecision 77.49 43 11.11
Table 2.
Expressed Negative Thinking Patterns of the Participants before the Intervention
Participant Strand from Participants’ Short Essays
1 “I’m depressed….Engineering is tough and very hard because it is full of challenging
questions.”
2 “Engineering is very hard to accomplish but the subjects are quite hard.”
3 “Depressed and it is hard because a lot of people say that is too hard..”
4 “I feel scared coz it’s a hard course…”
5 “I am nervous and less confident because I am not sure about this course…”
6 “I may not pass the course and I may not be able to handle the stress given because it is
difficult..”
7 “I feel discouraged and helpless about the course because I failed my exam in trigo..”
8 “I think that I might not be good as I thought I would be in my course…”
9 “I believe that I may not excel in my career choice because I have some negative
characteristics…”
10 “That I could not finish it (Engineering) because it is hard..”
11 “I feel scared about the course since it is hard…”
12 “Maybe I made the wrong choice in choosing my course because I am incompetent..”
13 “I think that I will fail in reaching my goal of becoming an engineer because not good
enough…”
14 “I think that I can’t make it. If I am challenged now, what more for next years? I think
of this because I don’t trust myself..”
15 “I am not good enough to handle it because I do not excel…”
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High mean scores can be seen from self-clarity (M=6.32, SD=1.57) and
occupational knowledge and training (M=5.16, SD=1.34) domains of
participants’ career indecision. By merely examining the means of some
domains, it seemed that there were positive changes on their perceived
abilities to make career decisions.
Table 3.
Descriptive Statistics of the Participants’ Career Indecision after the
Intervention
Mean n Standard deviation
Comfort 5.05 43 1.36
Self-Clarity 6.32 43 1.57
Occupational Knowledge and Training 5.16 43 1.34
Decisiveness 5.12 43 1.83
Career Choice Importance 3.36 43 1.15
Career Indecision 82.47 43 13.0
Table 4.
Significant Difference Test for Career Indecision among the Participants
Table 5.
Significant Difference Test for Self-Clarity among the Participants
Career Indecision M SD t df D Sig. (2-tailed)
Pre-test 5.75 1.68 1.94 42 .35 .05*
Post-test 6.32 1.57
Note: *Significant at α=.05
Table 6.
Participants’ Modified Cognitive Patterns after the Intervention
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Discussion
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