Too Many Doors, and Too Few: Perceived Career Option Breadth, Anticipated Regret and Career Decision-Making Difficulties in a Three-Wave Study of Chinese Young Adults

Career guidance usually treats a narrow option set as the problem, and career decision-making difficulties are modeled as decreasing in the range of options a young person perceives. This study asked whether that association is monotone. Three questionnaires spaced four weeks apart were completed by 1036 Chinese young adults (mean age 23.7) making a career decision: perceived career option breadth, maximizing tendency and career decision-making self-efficacy at Wave 1, anticipated career regret at Wave 2, and career decision-making difficulties at Wave 3. The data provided evidence of a U shape (quadratic b = 0.089, p < 0.001; Lind–Mehlum test p = 0.004). Difficulties reached a minimum 0.66 standard deviations above the mean (about 6.5 occupations in a parallel count-based model); the rise beyond it was less precisely estimated and sensitive to trimming and to the test used. Anticipated career regret rose convexly with option breadth, and accounting for it reduced the quadratic coefficient by 78%, while the direct association remained negative. Participants with a stronger maximizing tendency reached the estimated turning point at a lower option breadth. Career decision-making self-efficacy did not significantly weaken the regret–difficulty association. Wider option sets were associated with fewer difficulties only up to a point.