The Role of Obsession in Career Development, Career Decision-Making and Career Identity of Students

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a type of neurotic disorder that is included in the category of anxiety disorders, so it may affect the career development of individuals. Thus, the purpose of the study is to compare people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and normal people regarding their career development, career decision-making, and career identity. The research method was causal-comparative, and the study population included all the students of the University of Isfahan in the academic year 2015-2016. The sample was selected by random time sampling from the University of Isfahan students who had visited the counseling center. Then, the subjects were assessed by the Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive scale, and we diagnosed 85 with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and 50 others were normal. The students in the sample responded to Career Development Inventory-Australia (Creed & Patton, 2004), My Vocational Situation Inventory (Holland et al., 1980), Career Indecision (Osipow et al., 1976), and Career Self-awareness (Kermani, 2011). The results showed that there were significant differences between the two groups, namely people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and normal people, regarding the variables of planning, discovery, self-awareness, and indecision (p<0.001) and the variable of decision-making (p<0.05). But the difference between the two groups regarding the career identity variable was insignificant. Obsessive-compulsive disorder plays a significant role in career development and career decision-making. Differential analysis showed that the research variables explain approximately 50% of the group membership variance. Therefore, focusing on these variables in job counseling for obsessive individuals is very important.