The purpose of this study was to reveal how middle school students’perceived relationship with their fathers affects the children’s social problem solving, career exploration, and career decision making. Two research questions were examined. First...
The purpose of this study was to reveal how middle school students’perceived relationship with their fathers affects the children’s social problem solving, career exploration, and career decision making. Two research questions were examined. First, according to socio-demographic characteristics what differences exist among father-child relationship, social problem solving, career exploration and career decision-making? Second, how middle school students’perceived relationship with their fathers affect the children’s problem solving, career exploration and career decision-making?
Three hundred and eighty students from two middle schools located each in KangNam, Seoul and AnYang, KyungKi, participated in this study. Three validated measures were employed to assess given variables: father-child relationship assessment(Choi, 2007); social problem solving assessment (D’Zurilla & Nezu, 1990) that was modified by Huh(1999); and career exploration and decision-making assessment (Im, 2001). This study employed SPSS version 12.0 for statistical analyses. Frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, and t-tests were used to see the differences between the samples. MANOVA, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were employed to examine the relations between the variables.
For the first research question results showed that gender was significantly different in father-child relationship, specifically higher level of strictness in boy students. Age(grade) was significantly different, too; first graders scored higher in such sub-domains of father-child relationship as intimacy, devotion, and respect whereas third graders scored lower in the respect domain.
Fathers’level of education also showed significant difference in social problem solving among participants: students who had fathers with high school or lower education scored lower in social problem solving than students who had fathers with college or more education. Specifically, students who had fathers with college or higher education scored higher than other students in such sub-domains as problem identification and decision-making. Compared to other students, students who had fathers with graduate degrees scored higher in the alternative-production domain.
Gender, again, was statistically different in career exploration and career decision-making, such that girl students scored higher than boys in these domains. In the career exploration domain, first graders scored highest while second graders scored lowest among participants. Students with fathers of higher education (college or higher) scored higher in this career exploration domain than students with fathers of lower education (high school or lower).
For the second research question results showed that among sub-domains of father-child relationship, only the intimacy domain showed statistically significant difference. That is, students with higher level of intimacy also scored higher than other students in career exploration and career decision-making. In sum, students’socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and level of fathers’education were statistically different in father-child relationship, social problem solving, and career exploration and career decision-making. Also, the intimacy sub domain of father-child relationship was positively correlated with social problem solving, career exploration, and career decision-making. This result thus suggests that building affectively intimate relationship with their fathers may be crucial for adolescents to increase their ability of problem solving, career exploration, and career decision-making. Therefore, it is suggested that program development to improve father-child relationship for families with adolescents are needed.