College freshmen enter higher education at varying degrees of maturity and some are, therefore, more certain of their future career plans than are others. In the present study the investigators sought to determine the factors associated with decision and indecision regarding collegiate major and career choice. Thus, the authors developed the Career Decision Readiness Inventory (CDRI), a 36-item questionnaire intended to sample factors previously identified as relevant to decisionmaking behavior. The factors include: need for information, risk-taking propensity, self-confidence, ego involvement with choice, manifest anxiety, independence-dependence, subjective uncertainty, and fear of failure. The CDRI was administered during the summer of 1970 to 1,137 incoming freshmen at the University of Texas at Austin. The survey revealed that 3 source factors are determinants of student decisionmaking: (1) goal-orientation, or a propensity toward direct concern with the attainment of a career objective; (2) self-orientation, or a propensity to give primacy to attaining increased self-awareness and personal growth; and (3) indecisiveness-orientation, or a propensity to find all types of important decisions difficult to make. (HS)