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The purpose of this study is to examine the role of mastery goal orientation, support for career development, career decision-making self-efficacy and engineering interest in career adaptability for engineering students.

Data were collected from 307 Korean engineering students from two universities. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data and examine the relationships among the variables.

The results indicated that the level of mastery of goal orientation and support for career development significantly affected career decision-making self-efficacy. Engineering students’ career decision-making self-efficacy also positively influenced their engineering interests and career adaptability. Finally, the students’ engineering interest positively affected their career adaptability.

This study demonstrated that important factors for career planning and development need to be successively considered during the career choice process by linking it to career decision-making self-efficacy, engineering interest and career adaptability (career choice action), in consecutive order.

This study adopts an action research approach with the aim of improving the process of career decision making among undergraduates in a business school at a “new” university in the UK.

The study utilised unfreezing techniques, multiple case studies in conjunction with the principle of analogical encoding, and lecture input to influence the values underpinning the way students intend to engage in the process of career decision making. The paper draws on evidence collected over three cycles of an action research project and from different data sources, i.e. questionnaires, interviews and observations.

The study found that students from working class and middle class backgrounds exhibited similar types of career decision making behaviour. The students tended not to have a future orientation; they relied on informally absorbed information and their intuition rather than rational approaches to decision making; and they demonstrated an unwillingness to be instrumental and operate as “players”. The series of interventions (i.e. the unfreezing exercise, the case studies and the lecture input) resulted in shifts in attitude to career decision making and preparation, particularly for those students who engaged in all three stages of the intervention The unfreezing exercise was seen as particularly important in encouraging students to critically reflect on their career decision making.

This research provides new insights into the factors influencing the way undergraduates approach career decision making. It also provides suggestions for encouraging students to critically reflect on how they make career decisions and prepare for the transition to the graduate labour market.

Explores the direct effects of internal orientation, self‐esteem, instrumentality, expressiveness and the interactive effects of internality, instrumentality and self‐esteem on the variance of career decision‐making self‐efficacy expectation. A set of questionnaires was administered to a group of Kuwaiti college students (Bachelor of Business Administration programme) which consisted of 84 men and 150 women. Results indicated that among men and women instrumental attributes had a considerably stronger positive relationship with career decision making self‐efficacy than the other independent variables and that while the interactive effect of internality and instrumentality on career decision making was significant, the interactions of internality and self‐esteem and instrumentality and self‐esteem were not. Discusses results and implications in the context of Arab sociopolitics.

This paper aims to link findings from laboratory-based decision-making research and decision-making competence (DMC) aspects that may be central for career-related decision-making processes. Past research has identified individual differences in rational responses in decision situations, which the authors refer to as DMC. Although there is a robust literature on departures from rational responses focused on heuristics and biases (H&B) in decision-making, such evidence is largely confined to group-level differences observed in psychology laboratories and has not been extended to the realm of career development and workforce behavior.

By first introducing the concept of DMC and contextualizing it within organizations and the work environment, the paper outlines a review on recent development concerning debiasing interventions in organizations and provides insights on how these may be effective with regard to organizational performance and individual career development.

The contribution presents a perspective to improve knowledge about career decision-making competence (C-DMC) by presenting an approach linking decision-making research to interventions aiming at managing H&B and systematic misperceptions in career processes.

This contribution is one of the few linking decision-making research to the applied context of organizations and of career competences. Moreover, while some research has treated decision-making skills as traits, this contribution provides support to consider them developable as competencies.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which economic factors influence the career decision‐making process of working class students.

The study involved an initial survey of 165 final‐year students from a range of degree programmes. It was followed by in‐depth interviews with 30 working class students.

It is shown that many working class students are not actively involved in career enhancing activities that develop their employability. The majority of students are also failing to engage seriously in the career decision‐making process. Furthermore, most students indicate that they wish to remain within commuting distance of their home when looking for jobs. Existing research identifies limited economic capital as an important factor influencing such behaviour. However, this study suggests that the students' values and their non‐financial circumstances appear to have more effect on their career decision making.

If economic factors were the most important influence on the career decision‐making behaviour of working class students there would be a limited role for careers education. However, because the students' values appear to be a more important influence there is scope for intervention. This paper suggests that activity based approaches using multiple case studies, analogical encoding and group work seem to provide the best way of encouraging students to critically evaluate the way they currently engage in career decision making.

This paper provides evidence to support interventions to improve the career decision‐making behaviour of working class students (and the wider student population). It also advocates a novel approach to such interventions.

The effect of vicarious learning during clinical or medical internships on graduates' adaptive career behaviours has attracted scant attention from healthcare researchers, particularly, in the developing world context. Drawing upon the social cognitive career theory model of career self-management (SCCT-CSM), the current study examines how vicarious learning influences the clinical graduates' adaptive career behaviours (i.e. career exploration and decision-making) via career exploration and decision-making self-efficacy (CEDSE) and career intention.

Data were collected from 293 nursing graduates undertaking clinical internships in 25 hospitals across Nigeria who willingly participated in this study as they were also assured of confidentiality at two-waves. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a path analysis.

The findings showed that vicarious learning during clinical internship had a direct effect on career exploration, decision-making and career decision self-efficacy among graduate trainees. Also, the findings revealed that the effects of vicarious learning on the graduates' career exploration and career decision-making were significantly mediated by career decision self-efficacy and career intentions.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for higher education institutions and industries that send and receive clinical graduates for clinical internships to gain more skills. More emphasis should be on encouraging learners to learn vicariously in addition to other forms of learning experiences available during clinical internships.

The study explains that the graduates' higher engagement in clinical career exploration and decision-making was based on a higher level of vicarious learning during internships. The results suggest that higher education institutions and healthcare service providers can derive greater benefits from more emphasis on promoting vicarious learning during clinical internships.

There is neither doubt nor debate that career decision-making is essential and has long-term effects on the lives of individuals, families and communities. Despite the utmost significance of career decision-making, it is well acknowledged in the literature that it remains difficult for young people in many countries worldwide to make informed and meaningful career decisions. Concerning this difficulty, this chapter presents findings from a small-scale doctoral research project investigating what influences students’ career decision-making at one public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) college in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The doctoral study on which this paper reports was framed within an interpretive framework and used focus groups and individual interviews to generate data. Following the original research project, we frame this chapter within the sociological perspective, thereby focusing on the notions of careership (Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997) and navigational capacity (Appadurai, 2004). Also, the sociological perspective reveals the tension and relation between structure and agency. Several factors influence young people’s career decision-making, for example, socio-economic status and capacity to aspire, life turning points, and horizons of action and possibility. The findings show that the participants operate from a position of disadvantage and lack; hence, career decision-making is more of a mission than a natural step in education and training. The chapter concludes that educational institutions should expand the horizon for action and improve the navigational maps of young people as they move through education and career paths.

The objective of the study was to explore the factors influencing the career decisions of students doing the students' undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) programmes from urban private universities/colleges in the Indian context.

Career decision-making is determined by different factors and is contextual. The present study explores and identifies the prominent factors influencing career decision-making. A pool of 33 questions was developed, and these questions were initially administered to a sample of 233 students. Principal component analysis with Varimax Rotation identified salient factors. In the second study, confirmatory analysis was performed based on the opinion of 304 students.

The study shows that the student's career deciding factors include (1) career clarity, (2) career exploration, (3) career reward and recognition and (4) career initiative for professional and personal growth.

The study focussed on career-deciding factors for UG and PG students from urban universities/colleges in the Indian context and the findings can be used for planning career counselling interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of high school students on the factors impacting their career decisions and whether gender and grade have an influence on the decision‐making process.

Literature review was used to identify relevant factors which were incorporated into the design of the survey instrument. The questionnaire was administered via a postal survey and information collected from 599 male and 491 female high school students in the Western Cape Province. Survey response data were subjected to descriptive statistics and subsequently parametric tests.

Salary, working conditions, opportunities for promotion and lifelong learning were reported by both male and female students as the most important factors, whereas family tradition and peers were the least important factors according to the male and female high school students, respectively. Grade had a significant impact on the process with students in Grade 11 scoring higher on salary, working conditions and lifelong learning opportunities whereas Grades 12 and 10 scored higher on skills shortage and family tradition, respectively.

The cross‐sectional data made it difficult to generalise the findings.

The findings are of particular importance to high school teachers and guidance counsellors who influence career choices amongst high school students. It is likely that teachers and counsellors themselves have been negatively influenced by the poor image of the construction industry. The identification of factors enables the development of viable strategies and balances the social dynamics of the male dominated environment.

There are few studies which try to investigate the career decision‐making process of high school students in an African environment. These results challenge the factors impacting career decision making among South African high school students and provide information rarely examined. Conclusively, the paper finds that control variables such as grade and gender are significant in the career decision‐making process of high school students. This paper contributes to bridging that gap.

The present paper examines the effects of two decision‐framing inductions on young adults' set of career options: first, whether young adults use abilities or interests as the grounds for their vocational choices and, second, whether young adults approach the decision‐making task by including all career options to which they feel positively or by eliminating all career options to which they feel negatively.

A 2 × 2 experimental design was used to collect data from a diverse group of college undergraduates.

The results suggest that individuals who choose careers on the basis of skills and who use the inclusion decision‐making procedure are significantly more likely to narrow down their sets of career options.

The paper also suggests that Holland's model of vocational choice (RIASEC) may be differentially useful in guiding students to appropriate vocations for themselves. Students with a “social” profile, for example, have a much larger and more diffuse set of career options available to them than students with “realistic” or “investigative” profiles.

The findings here suggest that the prevalent practice of focusing students' attention on finding activities they like may be less successful in helping students identify appropriate careers than focusing students' attention on their skills and abilities.

The paper addresses a career decision‐making phenomenon that has received increasing attention in the press and among educators.