The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between college women's career commitment, their ego identity status, and aspects of their backgrounds. Major independent variables were academic classification, ego identity status, and perceptions of career-related barriers. Other independent variables were preferred future career pattern, academic ability, gender traditionality of academic major, family's socioeconomic status, length of mother's employment outside home, and frequency of changing major. The dependent variables were two dimensions of career commitment: the Tendency to Foreclose Scale (TTFS) and the Vocational Exploration and Commitment Scale (VECS).
Results showed that senior women were more developmentally advanced on career commitment, especially on the Tendency to Foreclose dimension. Freshmen scored higher than senior women in Moratorium Ego Identity Status, thus they seemed to experience more developmental tasks, but had not made any decisions. Other than that, no significant differences between freshmen and seniors were found in Ego Identity Status. In addition, Identity Achievement women scored significantly higher on the TTFS and significantly lower on the VECS than did Non-Identity Achievement women. Perceptions of increased career barriers were positively related to the VECS, but not for the TTFS. The longer a college woman's mother had been employed, the more commitment she had for her career choice. Other variables that made unique contributions to career commitment scores were academic classification, gender traditionality of academic major, and preferred future career pattern. Seniors were more committed to career choices than were freshmen.
Women who chose more traditional female majors tended not to foreclose their career choices. Different preference of future career pattern had differ- ent levels of career commitment.

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