A Taxonomy of Difficulties in Career Decision Making Itamar Gati and Mina Krausz Samuel H. Osipow Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ohio State University A general theoretical taxonomy of career decision-making difficulties, based on decision theory, has been developed. To examine the proposed taxonomy empirically, a questionnaire was constructed in which the various possible difficulties in the theoretical model were represented by respective statements. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 259 young Israeli adults who were at the beginning of their career decision-making process and to an American sample of 304 university students. The observed relations among the 10 scales, which represent the 10 theoretical categories of difficulties, and those among the items within 2 selected categories, were similar in the 2 samples and compatible with the expected relations derived from the theoretical model. The implications for career counseling and research are discussed. The growing rate of change in the world of work increases the number of career transitions individuals make during their lifetime. The quality of the career decisions made during these transitions is significant for both the individual and society. Making a career decision is, however, a complex process. Although some people make such decisions easily, at least apparently, others face difficulties in making their career decisions, and many seek professional help. One of the central aims of career counseling is to facilitate the career decision-making process of counselees and, in particular, to help them overcome the difficulties they encounter during this process. Therefore, identifying the unique difficulties that prevent individuals from reaching a decision is an essential step in providing them with the help they need. The construct of career indecision has been used to refer to the problems individuals may have in making their career decision (for a review, see Slaney, 1988). Because of its recognized significance, career indecision is one of the central research issues of career psychology (Betz, 1992; Itamar Gati and Mina Krausz, Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; Samuel H. Osipow, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University. This research was supported by Grant 94-139 from the United States—Israel Binational Science Foundation and carried out at the National Council of Jewish Women Research Institute for Inno- vation in Education of the Hebrew University. We thank Naomi Fassa for valuable discussions; Nitza Shitz, Leah Hass, Tzachi Ashkenazi, Hadas Benari, Mary Hill, and Hadassa Keren for their help in data collection and analyses; and Daniela Ben-Dor, Naomi Goldblum, Liat Kibari, Aluma Reiss, and Orit Tramper for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Itamar Gati, Department of Psychology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel 91905, or to Samuel H. Osipow, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, Ohio 43210. Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to Itamar Gati at msgati@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il or to Samuel H. Osipow at sosipow@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu . Fouad, 1994; Meier, 1991; Tinsley, 1992). Indeed, research on career development and choice has devoted much attention to the categorization of various problems related to indecision. However, some of these discussions have been purely theoretical, without any empirical testing (e.g., Campbell & Cellini, 1981; Miller, 1971), whereas others have had mainly an empirical focus in attempting to develop various measures of career indecision. Furthermore, it appears that these two lines of research, the theoretical and the empirical, have been conducted independently of one another and by different groups of investigators. In his introduction to the special issue on indecision in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Tinsley (1992, p. 211) suggested that "efforts to relate research on career indeci- sion to the decision making process and to 510 Journal of Counseling Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1996, Vol. 43, No. 4, 1-5260022-0167/96/$3.00