Article Ambiguity Tolerance With Career Indecision: An Examination of the Mediation Effect of Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy

The mediation of career decision-making self-efficacy on the link of ambiguity tolerance (AT) with career indecision was examined in a sample of college students (N 253). It was hypothesized that AT could help reduce career indecision through increasing career decision-making self-efficacy, where this effect would vary by different types of indecision. Results supported the differential mediation hypothesis, finding that career decision-making self-efficacy mediated the link of AT with lack of motivation, general indecisiveness, lack of information, and inconsistent information. The mediation effect of career decision-making self-efficacy on the link of AT with lack of motiva-tion was relatively weak. The implications of this study are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. Keywords ambiguity tolerance, career decision-making self-efficacy, career indecision, career counseling Career decision making is conceived by many theorists (e.g., Holland, 1997; Parsons, 1909; Sampson, Lenz, Reardon, & Peterson, 1999) as a process of collecting information about oneself and the world of work and then using information to find an area of match. However, this process depends upon the quality of information gathered and also the ability to put the information together in terms of determining a reasonable match. It is a difficult process and is fraught with ambiguity. So a key aspect in career decision making is the ability to deal with this ambiguity. Xu and Tracey (2014) revealed that ambiguity tolerance (AT) was negatively associated with career indecision, where individuals who were tolerant of ambiguity had less indecision. As self-efficacy has been acknowledged as a central variable closely linking to a variety of career out