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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1537321
Development and Validation of the Dysfunctional Career Thoughts Scale for Chinese University Students
Provisionally accepted- 1 Nanjing Vocational University of Industry Technology, Nanjing, China
- 2 Konkuk University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea
This research aimed to develop and validate an instrument assessing dysfunctional career thoughts among Chinese university students. From 104 preliminary items evaluated for content validity, the Dysfunctional Career Thoughts Scale (DCTS) was constructed through exploratory factor analysis with 389 students. The final 20-item instrument encompasses three dimensions: (1) Self-knowledge Uncertainty and Choice Anxiety, (2) Career Decision-Making Amotivation, and (3) Career Decision-Making Process Inefficacy. Validation with 241 additional students confirmed robust construct validity through confirmatory factor analysis. Concurrent validity was established via significant negative correlations between dysfunctional career thoughts and both career decision-making self-efficacy and vocational identity. While the DCTS demonstrates considerable theoretical and practical utility, certain limitations require further investigation in future studies.
Keywords: Dysfunctional career thoughts, scale development, scale validation, Chinese university students, cultural differences
Received: 30 Nov 2024; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LI and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Donghyuck Lee, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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