Exploring career decision-making styles across three European countries

Enhancing Career Decision Status of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Through Learning Engagement: Perspective of SOR Model

Higher education plays the role of cultivating talents in national development and meets the talent sources needed by the development of the state, industries and enterprises. Besides, for students, higher education can provide stimuli to improve the development of family and personal career. Especially for socioeconomically disadvantaged Students, higher education means the main factor for turning over the Socio- Economic Status. Universities endow students with abundant employment skills, so as to make them more confident in contending with the challenges in the job market. However, innate pessimism or negative attitudes and cognition may exist in socioeconomically disadvantaged Students, thereby providing effective learning context to improve their learning engagement. This study explores the influence on students’ career decision status from deep approach to learning, problem-based learning, self-efficacy and employability. A total of 627 valid questionnaires are collected in this study. PLS-SEM was adopted to verify the structural relationship in data analysis via SmartPLS. The results indicate that deep approach to learning and problem-based learning have significant impacts on students’ self-efficacy and employability; self-efficacy has significant impacts on employability and career decision status; employability has significant impact on career decision status; and that self-efficacy and employability play significant mediating roles in the research framework.

Evaluating the quality of the list of occupations recommended for further exploration

Access to online career information increases the complexity of career decisions (choosing a major or job). When the number of alternatives is large, the first step is to compile a list of promising career alternatives for further exploration, often by using interest inventories (e.g., the Self-Directed Search). But what makes such a list useful? The judgments of 20 career counselors and 103 graduate students supported the hypothesis that higher list quality is associated with a greater similarity between the occupations on the list, fewer occupational fields represented by the occupations on the list, and a list length approximating seven occupations.

Construction and Initial Validation of the Higher Education Orientations Questionnaire

Attaining higher education continues to be important for successful integration into the 21st-century world of work. The goal of the present study was to develop and test a 5-dimensional model and a corresponding measure of individuals’ orientations toward higher education––the Higher Education Orientations (HEO) questionnaire. The proposed model comprises five orientations: Profession (attaining an occupation), Knowledge (expanding knowledge and intellectual horizons), Social (expanding social affiliation and integration), Prestige (attaining social status), and External (pleasing significant others). Study 1a ( N = 798) supported the HEO questionnaire’s psychometric properties, and an EFA supported its five-factor structure. The results of a CFA in Study 1b ( N = 748) confirmed the HEO’s five-dimensional structure. Study 2 ( N = 395) supported the psychometric qualities of the HEO’s English version. In Study 3 ( N = 713), using SEM, we found the HEO associated with (a) career decision status, (b) career decision-making difficulties, and (c) coping strategies, supporting its validity. Implications for research and counseling are discussed.

Career Exploration and Decision-Making Learning Experiences (CEDLE) Scales: Validation Among Chinese Vocational College Students

This research aimed to conduct a validation study of a Chinese version of the Career Exploration and Decision-Making Learning Experiences (CEDLE) scales among 2,372 Chinese vocational college students. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the factor structure of the CEDLE among 625 samples. We obtained both a four-factor model and a five-factor model. Study 2 examined the structure of the CEDLE among 1,747 students, and the results demonstrate the superiority of the five-factor model. A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis supported the measurement invariance for the gender groups. The Chinese version of the CEDLE had excellent reliability values from .80 to .88, and the findings demonstrated that the Chinese CEDLE was a valid and reliable measure of self-efficacy-related learning experiences. This study contributes to the literature on prior learning experiences regarding students’ career behavior by providing evidence of the applicability of the CEDLE-Chinese version.