Career Factors Inventory

Description

Respondents rate the CFI items using a 5-point scale. Ten of the items use a Likert scale with response alternatives anchored by 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). These items begin with the stem, “Before choosing or entering a particular career area, I need to.” Each item concludes with a statement identifying a specific task (e.g., “Talk to people in one or more various occupations” and “Attempt to answer, ‘Who am I?’”). High scores on these items indicate greater levels of career indecision.

The remaining 11 items use the semantic differential format. These items consist of a phrase followed by polar opposite adjectives that anchor the rating scale as illustrated in the following example:

• When I think about actually deciding for sure what I want my career to be, I feel:

The other two phrases used in the CFI are, “For me, decision making seems,” and “While making most decisions, I am.” These phrases are followed by six, three, and two polar adjectives, respectively.

The number of items composing each CFI scale and the range of possible scores on the scales are Need for Career Information and Career Choice Anxiety (6 items each; range = 6–30), Generalized Indecisiveness (5 items; range = 5–25), and Need for Self-Knowledge (4 items; range = 4–20).

Administration

The CFI was designed to be self-administering, self-scoring and self-interpreting; professional supervision of the administration and scoring should be unnecessary. Despite this, the authors advise psychologists to help examinees understand the purpose of the inventory and the four constructs it measures. Competent practice requires that psychologists make sure clients understand their purpose in completing a psychometric instrument. However, explaining the meaning of the scales prior to completing the instrument may influence the results.

The CFI directions are simple, and the inventory has an eighth-grade reading level. It can be administered [Page 1478]to an individual or a group, and it is appropriate for persons ages 13 and older. The CFI is not timed, but most examinees should be able to complete it in 5–10 minutes.

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