Career Decision Ambiguity Tolerance Scale: Construction and initial validations ☆ Hui Xu ⁎, Terence J.G. Tracey Arizona State University, USA article info abstract Article history: Received 8 January 2015 Available online 4 February 2015 The Career Decision Ambiguity Tolerance Scale (CDAT) measures individual evaluations of and responses to ambiguity encountered in career decision making. It was developed and initially validated through two studies of college students. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis consistently showed a three-factor structure for career decision ambiguity tolerance, consisting of preference, tolerance, and aversion. In addition to support for construct validity and subscale reli- abilities, the findings also support the scale's incremental validity in predicting career indecision, career decision-making self-efficacy, and career adaptability over and beyond general ambiguity tolerance. The theoretical meaning and practical application of the CDAT were discussed along with its limitations and suggestions for future research. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Ambiguity tolerance Career decision Instrument development Factor analysis Incremental validity 1. Introduction Career decision making has been proposed to involve processes of collecting information about the self and the world of work and using that information to identify a matching educational or vocational choice (e.g., Holland, 1997; Parsons, 1909; Sampson, Lenz, Reardon, & Peterson, 1999). However, individuals hardly ever have clear and unequivocal career information. Many times the infor- mation is ambiguous or simply unavailable at the moment of decision. Therefore, a key variable in career decision making is the ability to deal with this ambiguity. While there have been studies supporting the salient role of general ambiguity tolerance in career decision making (Xu & Tracey, 2014a, 2014b), there has been little research investigating tolerance with the ambiguity specifically encoun- tered in career decision making. This domain-specific ambiguity tolerance is expected to be more closely associated with the career decision making process and thus could better predict career decision making outcomes. However, an instrument specifically measur- ing this construct is not available. The goal of the current study was to construct a Career Decision Ambiguity Tolerance Scale and examine its validity. 2. Ambiguity tolerance in career decision making An ambiguous situation is one which individuals cannot adequately structure or categorize (Budner, 1962). Ambiguity tolerance (AT) has been defined as the way individuals evaluate and respond to ambiguous situations or information characterized by an array of unfamiliar, complex, or inconsistent clues (Budner, 1962; Furnham & Ribchester, 1995). According to Furnham and Ribchester (1995), people with low levels of ambiguity tolerance tend to experience stress, react prematurely, and avoid ambiguous information, Journal of Vocational Behavior 88 (2015) 1–9 ☆ We would like to express our gratitude to Judith Homer and Liang Liao for their valuable feedback regarding the initial items. This project was supported by the Office of the Vice-President for Research and Economic Affairs, the Graduate Research Support Program, and the Graduate Education at Arizona State University. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Counseling & Counseling Psychology, MC-0811, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0811, USA. E-mail address: huixu5@asu.edu (H. Xu). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.01.006 0001-8791/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Vocational Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb