Looking for references and research about the CDP? Go to the CDP Manual.
Time to Complete
5 minutes
Overview
First, we’ll discuss the Career Decision Profile’s (CDP) history, purpose and what it measures. And then explore 3 ways you can use the CDP with those you want to help. Note: Several of the terms we use are broadly defined,
- “Advisor” is anyone administering the CDP, including peer educators, academic advisors and professional counselors,
- “Clients” are those who take the CDP, and
- “Career” is paid or unpaid “work” — activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result — like, a training program, academic major, occupation, or hobby.
Here is a student-facing introduction to the Career Decision Profile:
Takeaways
- Learn about the CDP’s history and purpose
- Learn who it is for and what it measures
- Explore 3 ways you can use the CDP
The CDP’s History and Purpose
Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC, counseling psychologist and counselor educator at North Carolina State University, developed the Career Decision Profile (CDP) to assess the basic information needed to understand and help people who were undecided about their career direction. It is used
- By advisors to help individuals,
- As a self-assessment, directing clients to self-help resources,
- As a diagnostic tool to identify clients who need help, and
- As a research tool.
Career decision in three dimensions…
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Jones and other researchers thought available career decision models and measures limited advisors’ effectiveness. Focusing on indecision (decided vs. undecided) was too simplistic and did not take into account unique needs. Advisors needed a multi-dimensional approach.
Research by Dr. Jones and a doctoral student identified 3 dimensions of career decision status — decidedness, comfort and reasons.
Testing and validating the approach
In 1988, Dr. Jones first published the CDP, a short, reliable, valid measure of career decision status. Since then, he and other researchers conducted and published research studies establishing its reliability, validity and field effectiveness. Like all of the counseling tools he has developed, it is self-interpretive and requires no special credential for advisors to administer it. Over the next 30 years, advisors, counselors and researchers have used the CDP in a variety of settings in several countries.
New online CDP version
Until recently, the CDP was only available in a self-scoring, paper-pencil format. In 2020, Career Key and its founder Dr. Jones created a modern, improved online version of the CDP. We describe those updates in the CDP Manual.
Career Key owes special thanks and gratitude to career services professionals at Kansas State University and the University of Toronto-Mississauga for their user feedback and pilots with the online CDP. Their input will greatly benefit their fellow practitioners using the CDP in the future. Join them by sharing your feedback with us.
What It Measures
In about 5 minutes, the CDP inventory measures a person’s career decision status. 3 dimensions make up the status: decidedness, comfort and reasons. Advisors quickly gain insights into a person’s career decision needs.
The CDP is suitable for high school students through adults in transition. Clients can self-interpret the scores and act on its results.
The CDP is an 18-item measure. Each item is measured using a seven-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Decidedness
(2 items)
How decided an individual sees themselves in choosing a career.
Comfort
(2 items)
How comfortable they are with their progress in making a choice.
Reasons
5 scales (2-3 items each)
- Self-Clarity: Individuals’ perception of the clarity with which they understand their interests, abilities, and personality and how they fit with different careers.
- Knowledge about Careers and Education Programs: How well informed individuals believe they are about careers and educational programs that will fit their interests and abilities.
- Decisiveness: How capable individuals believe they are in making decisions without unnecessary delay, difficulty, or reliance on others.
- Career Choice Importance: How important choosing and working in a career is at the time.
- Barrier: individuals are asked if they face an important problem that worries them and creates a barrier to making a decision. If so, they are asked to share it in an open text box.
Address potential advisor concerns
Before using the CDP, some advisors may worry that clients are being judged or feel judged by the measure. Others may be concerned that it may be used as a substitute for a human advisor. In practice, advisors using the CDP haven’t validated these concerns. It is important to know that the CDP does NOT,
- Determine and label someone “undecided.” It measures a person’s level of decidedness and comfort with where they are in making a decision.
- Place a value judgement on where the person is on their career decision journey. There are no “good” or “bad” results. It is a neutral snapshot of where that person is and how they feel on the day they take the CDP.
- Substitute for what advisors and counselors can learn from interviews. It compliments advisors’ efforts by identifying clients who need help and tailor the kind of support that will be the most helpful, leading to better outcomes and more efficient service. It also enables more meaningful conversations about person’s individual needs. As one reviewer wrote,
“Describing the client’s decisional status and the reasons for that status prepares the counselor to prescribe unique interventions that facilitate the client’s decision making and career choice.”
All of the above is important for advisors to understand. Like any inventory, how advisors think about and present it to people make a big impact on how clients perceive it.
How Professionals Use the CDP
Career counselors and academic advisors from a variety of education and workforce settings seek to balance serving individuals’ needs with limited resources. They also want to measure their programs’ effectiveness and show the value of their work using data. The CDP helps them do that.
Advisors use the CDP in 3 ways, to
- Explore a person’s career decision status to identify individual needs,
- Screen for career decision readiness to assign the right service level, and
- Evaluate programs and interventions through pre and post measurements.
We describe each below. For more detail and references, visit the CDP Manual.
Explore career decision status to identify individual needs
When you know where people are on their career decision journey and how they feel about it, you are better equipped to deliver meaningful, personalized support. Advisors receive a snapshot in time of how
- Decided on a career a person believes they are, and
- Comfortable a person is with where they are in the decision-making process.
The CDP reveals an individual’s needs, to strengthen their,
- Self-clarity about themselves and the career and education programs that best fit them,
- Knowledge of careers and education programs that fit their interests, and
- Capacity to make decisions,
Advisors also gain information that impacts how they advise regarding,
- Career choice importance, and
- Barriers to decision making.
All of this information informs how ready a person is to make a career decision. This makes it much easier for advisors.
Screen for career decision readiness to provide the right services
Everyone wants and needs to provide cost-effective, appropriate levels of service – to avoid over-serving or underserving clients. The CDP helps you evaluate a person’s readiness to make career decisions. Then, you can decide what level of service is best and what services to provide.
You can understand a person’s readiness to make a career decision in 2 dimensions:
- Capability to solve problems (internal)
- Complexity of their life circumstances (external)
In general, the higher a person’s capability and lower their complexity, the more ready they are to make career decisions. Likewise, low capability and high complexity makes decision making more difficult.
We categorize career readiness in 3 levels: low, moderate and high, which correspond to 3 service levels.
They are based on a well-known and respected differentiated service delivery model developed by career services counselors and researchers at Florida State University. (see CDP Manual for more details and references) The 3 levels align with a person’s readiness:
- Self-help services – high readiness
- Brief staff-assisted services – moderate readiness
- Individual case-managed services – low readiness
Career Key helps advisors assign these service levels by estimating a level for each client based on their CDP scores.
When you organize tasks and support around these service levels, you increase efficiency and effectiveness. You meet clients where they are – their readiness for decision making.
For example, you prepare a list of online resources for self-help clients that you reuse with little effort, while spending more time reaching out and helping those who need individual case-managed services.
Measure success through pre/post CDP data
Using the CDP as a pre and post measure, advisors can identify client outcomes of their advising and counseling interventions. This approach has been used successfully in evaluating the effectiveness and particular impacts of:
- Individual counseling
- College, career and life planning programs
- University department programs connecting their majors to careers in related fields
Now more than ever, advisors need data to support their programs. The online CDP and Career Key Central reporting makes this data easier to access and analyze.
Next Step:
About Career Decision Profile > Explore Client Indecision
Related:
About Career Decision Profile > Screen for Career Readiness
About Career Decision Profile > CDP Manual
Support > Manage CDP Clients