Since the implementation of the Chinese Higher Education Enrollment Policy in 1999, the number of college undergraduates has climbed dramatically, reaching record highs every year (Tian et al., 2021). According to a recent report from the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2023), the number of college graduates in China in 2025 is expected to reach 12.22 million, with an increase of 430,000 from the previous year. Meanwhile, with the slowdown in global economic growth, reduced domestic demand, lower public expectations for economic prospects, and saturated job market, employment problems among college students are becoming more severe and complicated (Dai et al., 2024; Tian et al., 2021). Thus, college students are likely to experience more career decision-making difficulties than in previous years. Career decision-making difficulties refer to the problems faced by individuals in making decisions about their career path, such as lack of readiness, information-exploration difficulties, and conflict (N. Li, 2009). How to alleviate college students’ career decision-making difficulties is a question worthy of consideration for career educators and practitioners.

 

From the viewpoint of expectancy-value models (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), doubtful individuals are less likely to act. Doubt impairs effort both before the action begins and while it is ongoing (Chamandy & Gaudreau, 2019). As such, students with greater career doubt might be less likely to engage in career exploration, resulting in career decision-making difficulties. Career doubt, a component of vocational identity, represents feelings of anxiety and uncertainty regarding career choices and commitments (Porfeli et al., 2011). Individuals experiencing career doubt often question their skills, employability, or alignment with desired careers, reducing motivation to engage in adaptive career behaviors like networking, internships, managing transitions, or forming more specific vocational goals and plans (Lent & Brown, 2013). For example, a student doubting their competence in a competitive field may think, “I’ll never excel here, so why bother?” Meanwhile, positive coping could indeed provide the motivational, cognitive, and behavioral efforts needed to manage perceived stresses and allow one to progress toward desired outcomes (Chamandy & Gaudreau, 2019; Pearlin et al., 1981). Career exploration, as a positive way of coping with career roles and transition, refers to gathering information relevant to career progress (Jiang et al., 2019). Chamandy and Gaudreau (2019) found career doubt affects individuals’ career goal progress by significantly hindering their task-oriented career exploration. The interplay of high career doubt and low career exploration leaves individuals with insufficient career information to make informed decisions (Chamandy & Gaudreau, 2019). Thus, career doubt may hinder individuals from conducting more career exploration, which might lead to career decision-making difficulties.

 

Social cognitive career theory emphasizes the moderating effect of contextual support on the association between career self-efficacy and career adaptive behaviors, such as career exploration (Chamandy & Gaudreau, 2019). Strong contextual support implies substantial emotional resources that individuals can obtain from their social relationships (T. Li et al., 2023), thus potentially strengthening the effect of career self-efficacy on career exploration. Bandura (1997) posited that when individuals experience difficulties, self-doubt—as the opposite of self-efficacy—hinders their effort, persistence, and behavior. Thus, contextual support might moderate the link between career doubt and career exploration. Meanwhile, as Chinese culture places a high value on hierarchy and social orientation, and Chinese parents traditionally play a significant role in choosing their children’s career paths (Chang et al., 2023; J. Zhang et al., 2019), career-related parental support may buffer the negative effect of career doubt on career exploration.

 

We recruited a convenience sample of 1,800 college students from two universities in China, of whom 63 provided incomplete responses. The remaining 1,737 responses were retained, with the sample comprising 1,263 women (72.7%) and 474 men (27.3%), of whom 450 (25.9%) were freshmen, 436 (25.1%) were sophomores, 467 (26.9%) were juniors, and 384 (22.1%) were seniors. Their mean age was 19.96 years (SD = 1.49). We obtained informed consent from all participants, and administered the measures as paper-and-pencil surveys in the classroom during school hours.

We measured participants’ level of career doubt with the career self-doubt dimension from the Chinese version of the Vocational Identity Status Assessment (L. Zhang et al., 2022). This dimension contains five items (e.g., “I may not be able to get the job I really want”) rated with a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). High scores reflect strong career self-doubt. In this study Cronbach’s alpha was .86, indicating the scale is reliable. We performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation and found that the multifactor structure fit the data well, χ²/df = 3.33, comparative fit index (CFI) = .96, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = .96, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .04, standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = .03.

 

We measured participants’ level of career exploration with the career exploration dimension from the Chinese version of the Vocational Identity Status Assessment (L. Zhang et al., 2022). It contains nine items divided across two subscales, including four items for in-breadth exploration (e.g., “Trying to have many different experiences so that I can find several jobs that might suit me”) and five items for in-depth exploration (e.g., “Trying to find people who share my career interests”). Participants rate the items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). High scores reflect strong career exploration. In this study Cronbach’s alpha was .85, indicating the scale is reliable. We also performed a CFA with maximum likelihood estimation and found that the two-factor model fit the data well, χ²/df = 3.45, CFI = .95, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .03.

 

We measured participants’ career decision-making difficulties with the Chinese version of the Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (N. Li, 2009). This scale comprises 35 items divided across three dimensions: lack of readiness (12 items, e.g., “I have not yet planned for my future career”), information-exploration difficulties (12 items, e.g., “I do not know what careers are related to my major”), and conflicts (11 items, e.g., “When faced with several possible choices, I have difficulties in making decisions”). Participants rate the items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Items 7 and 31 are reverse scored. In this study we adopted the total mean score as the indicator of career decision-making difficulties. High scores on the total scale represent a high level of decision-making difficulties. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .94 in this study, indicating the scale is reliable. We also performed a CFA with maximum likelihood estimation and found that the hypothesized three-factor structure fitted the data well, χ²/df = 3.68, CFI = .96, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .03.

 

We measured participants’ level of career-related parental support using the Career Social Support Inventory (Hou et al., 2010). It contains 20 items divided across four dimensions covering types of support that parents provide to their child to think about and take action for planning a career: information (e.g., “My parents pay my tuition”), advice (e.g., “When I am faced with a choice, my parents will analyze it with me and give me advice”), emotional (e.g., “My parents care about my feelings”), and material (e.g., “My parents share with me experiences from learning and work”). Participants respond to each item on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). High scores represent high career-related parental support. In this study Cronbach’s alpha was .93, indicating the scale is reliable. We also performed a CFA with maximum likelihood estimation and found that the hypothesized four-factor structure fitted the data well, χ²/df = 4.31, CFI = .94, TLI = .93, RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .03.

We analyzed the data using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.40.

Results

Given that self-report measures might be influenced by common method bias, we conducted Harman’s one-way test (Podsakoff et al., 2003). This test revealed that 10 factors had eigenvalues greater than 1, explaining 70.37% of the variance. The amount of variance explained by the first factor was 26.48%, which is significantly below the 40% cut-off, suggesting that the effect of common method bias was nonsignificant. 

We analyzed the means and standard deviations of the variables and calculated Pearson correlation coefficients between the variables to investigate overall trends in the measured variables. Career doubt was set as the predictor variable, the mediator was career exploration, the moderator was career-related parental support, and the outcomes variable was career decision-making difficulties. We applied multiple indices to evaluate the fit goodness of models: CFI and TLI (> .90), and RMSEA and SRMR (< .08; Byrne, 2012). The CFA results showed that the single-factor structure did not fit the data well, χ²/df = 9.31, CFI = .64, TLI = .53, RMSEA = .20, SRMR = .13.

 

Correlation analysis indicated there were significant associations among career doubt, career exploration, career-related parental support, and career decision-making difficulties (see Table 1). Specifically, career doubt was negatively related to career exploration and career-related parental support, and was positively related to career decision-making difficulties. Career exploration was negatively related to career decision-making difficulties, and was positively related to career-related parental support. Career decision-making difficulties were negatively related to career-related parental support.

The structural equation model we formed to explore the mediating role of career exploration between career doubt and career decision-making difficulties exhibited adequate fit statistics, χ²(12) = 49.88, p < .001, CFI = .98, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .03. The moderated mediation effect testing results are shown in Table 2. We observed that career doubt positively predicted career decision-making difficulties, and it also exhibited a negative predictive effect on career exploration. Meanwhile, career exploration negatively predicted career decision-making difficulties. Thus, there was a significant indirect effect of career doubt on career decision-making difficulties via the mediator of career exploration, .022, SE = 0.005, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.016, 0.036]. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported.

The negative effect of career doubt on career exploration was buffered by parental support, β = –.08, p < .01. That is, when faced with career doubt, students conducted more career exploration when they had greater parental support. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported. To understand this moderating effect, we conducted a simple effect analysis, which revealed that career-related parental support moderated the effect of career doubt on career exploration, with the effect being significant at different levels of career-related parental support: low (M − 1 SD), β = –.063, SE = .026, 95% CI [−0.115, −0.011]; medium (M), β = –.121, SE = 0.019, 95% CI [−0.158, −0.084]; and high (M + 1 SD), β = −.178, SE = 0.030, 95% CI [−0.227, −0.129]. The interaction between career doubt and parental support on career exploration is depicted in Figure 1.

The findings of this study are of importance for university students and career educators and practitioners, as we have illustrated how career doubt relates to higher career decision-making difficulties in the context of career exploratory behaviors. According to the expectancy-value model (Carver & Scheier, 2001), career self-doubt corrodes both belief in one’s capabilities and the perceived value of career exploration, keeping individuals in a cycle of avoidance and indecision that perpetuates career stagnation. According to social cognitive career theory (Lent & Brown, 2013), career-related parental support can buffer individuals’ career confusion and stagnation. We found that integrating parental career support into the career education system may be an important way to promote students’ career development. Taken together, our findings provide new information to understand the whole process from career doubt to career exploration to career decision-making difficulties. Addressing these doubts and difficulties through targeted psychological and educational interventions, such as constructing a career support ecosystem, is essential to fostering resilient, self-directed career development.

 

As posited by expectancy-value models (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), students who experience more career doubt may be less likely to conduct career exploration, leading to more career decision-making difficulties (Carver & Scheier, 2001). Career doubt is often associated with negative beliefs and automatic assumptions of not being good enough or not deserving good outcomes in their career choices. Therapeutic techniques within cognitive behavioral therapy encourage individuals to view these thoughts as hypotheses, not facts (Neenan, 2008). These techniques might be integrated into career-development programs so that educators and counselors can help students alleviate career doubt, allowing them to identify distortions in their thinking and find constructive ways of handling difficulties and distress regarding expectations.

 

Applying social cognitive career theory, we found that parental support had a buffering effect on the link between career doubt and career exploration (Lent & Brown, 2013). If students obtained more parental support, they had more substantial or emotional resources to deal with the stressful internal and external challenges related to career exploration (T. Li et al., 2023). This acts as a reminder of the value of parents’ role in students’ development. Career educators and practitioners can expand communication channels between schools and parents, such as conducting parent-involved career-exploration programs (Amundson & Penner, 1998). Schools can not only provide feedback on students’ career problems to parents but also guide parents to participate in their children’s career education, enabling students to receive more parental support.

 

These findings should be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, the directionality of the causal effects could not be detected with a cross-sectional research design. Second, the data were gathered using self-reported questionnaires, which might be affected by common method and social desirability biases. Future studies could be conducted with a longitudinal design and mixed data-collected methods to examine in more depth the effect of career doubt on career development.

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