The purpose of this study was to identify a causal relationship among career attitude maturity, parental attachment, psychological separation, ego-resilience, and self-esteem of undergraduates. The specific objectives were to identify the effect of pa...
The purpose of this study was to identify a causal relationship among career attitude maturity, parental attachment, psychological separation, ego-resilience, and self-esteem of undergraduates. The specific objectives were to identify the effect of parental attachment, psychological separation, ego-resilience, and self-esteem on career attitude maturity, to identify the moderate effect of ego-resilience and self-esteem between parental attachment and career attitude maturity, to identify the moderate effect of self-esteem between psychological separation and career attitude maturity, and identify the moderate effect of self-esteem between ego-resilience and career attitude maturity.
The population of this study is the 1,437,058 students attending four-year colleges according to the 2011 record (Korea Educational Development Institute, 2011). The research carried out the proportional stratified sampling considering the ratio of the location of the school, grade, and major of the students who are attending university. Through this process it was sampled 640 students, 80 students from 8 different universities.
A survey questionnaire was conducted to measure variables of this study. It was consisted of career attitude maturity scale, parental attachment scale, psychological separation scale, ego-resilience scale, and self-esteem scale, and demographic items. In this study, the existing scales were used and modified to measure career attitude maturity, parental attachment, psychological separation, ego-resilience, and self-esteem.
The data were collected by mail and e-mail from October 17th to November 3th 2012. A total of 570 out of 640 questionnaires were returned, of which 518 were used for analysis after data cleaning. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. To estimate parameters of proposed research model, covariance structure analysis were used. All data analysis was accomplished using the SPSS 18.0-Win statistics package, and AMOS 18.0 version. A alpha level of 5% was established prior for determining significance.
The finding of the study were as follow: First, the fix indexed of causal model among career attitude maturity, parental attachment, psychological separation, ego-resilience, and self-esteem were identified suitably. Second, factor loading of self-esteem to career attitude maturity was significant however the factors loading of parental attachment, psychological separation and ego-resilience to career attitude maturity were not significant. Third, parental attachment has indirect effect on career attitude maturity through ego-resilience and self-esteem. Forth, psychological separation has indirect effect on career attitude maturity through self-esteem. Fifth, ego-resilience has indirect effect on career attitude maturity through self-esteem.
Based on the finding of the study, major conclusions of this study were as follows: First, casual model of this study is suitable to empirical analysis on research variables. Second, self-esteem of undergraduates have direct effect on career attitude maturity. However, parental attachment, psychological separation and ego-resilience of undergraduates have no direct effect on career attitude maturity. Third, parental attachment has indirect effect on career attitude maturity with the full mediation effect of ego-resilience and self-esteem. Forth, psychological separation has indirect effect on career attitude maturity with the full mediation effect of self-esteem. Fifth, ego-resilience has indirect effect on career attitude maturity with the full mediation effect of self-esteem.
Some recommendations for future researches were suggested: First, it is recommended for further researches to consider other possible variables which can affect career attitude maturity of undergraduates. Second, further researches need to choose career attitude maturity scale more carefully because the structural concept of career attitude maturity is various. Third, it is necessary to review of ego-resilience measurement scale which requires further examination. Fourth, further research should consider both psychological separation and ego-resilience.