Reliability and Validity of Five-Level Response Continua for the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale

Abstract

The present study, based on three samples of college students totaling 1,832 participants, resulted in the conclusion that a 5-level response continuum for the short form of the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSE)1 proved at least as reliable and valid as the 10-level continua used in normative studies. Values of coefficient alpha ranged from .78 to .87 for the 5-level continuum, in contrast to .69 to .83 for the 10-level continuum. Criterion-related validity correlations with career indecision and vocational identity were comparable for the two response continua. Validity with respect to the scales of the Career Decision Profile was examined, as was construct validity with respect to measures of hope, goal stability, and positive and negative affect. Overall, the study suggests the psychometric quality of the CDSE when 5-level response continua are used and adds to knowledge of the nomological network of the construct.1

Exploring the Student Engagement Instrument and Career Perceptions with College Students

“…Research in this area is scant, and our paper is the first, to our knowledge, to address this question even though the concept of career decision self-efficacy has gained increasing attention. Career decision self-efficacy has been deemed important for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and any group lacking in efficacy information (Betz, Hammond, & Multon, 2005).…”

“…Originally called the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale, the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (CDSE-SF) measures students' confidence in their ability to engage in career and educational decision-making and has been validated for use with college students (Betz et al, 2005;Betz & Taylor, 2001). The CDSE-SF is composed of 25 rating-scale items in which respondents indicate their level of confidence in completing a career-related task (e.g., selecting a major from a list of potential majors) on a 5-point scale, where 1 indicates no confidence and 5 indicates complete confidence.…”

“…Self-appraisal (SA), Occupational Information (OI), Goal Selection (GS), Planning (P), and Problem Solving (PS) are the 5 CDSE-SF subscales; each contains 5 items (Betz & Taylor, 2001). Based on a diverse sample of 1,832 college students, norming studies indicated that internal consistency reliability estimates for CDSE-SF subscales ranged from .78 to .87 with total scale estimates ranging from .94 to .95 (Betz et al, 2005).…”

Evaluating FOCUS‐2's Effectiveness in Enhancing First‐Year College Students’ Social Cognitive Career Development

“…In a subsequent study, short form reliabilities ranged from .69 (Problem Solving) to .83 (Goal Selection) for the subscales and .93 for the total score (Betz & Klein, 1996). Betz, Hammond, and Multon (2005) Subsequent studies involving individuals of varying age, culture, and racelethnicity (e.g., White college students, raciallethnic minority college students, South…”

Differences in Counselors’ Career Outputs in View of Licensure Status in Malaysia

“…Albert Bandura first introduced this construct back in 1986. Numerous of research have been carried out in different domains such as mathematics [1], career decision [2], emotional intelligence [3], organizational culture [4] and training [5].…”