The purpose of this study was to identify the structural relationship among career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability of undergraduates. Specific objectives to accomplish the research...
The purpose of this study was to identify the structural relationship among career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability of undergraduates. Specific objectives to accomplish the research goal were as follows: first, identify the fit indices of hypothetical structural model of career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability of undergraduates; second, identify the direct effect of emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability on career preparation behavior of undergraduates; third, identify the indirect effect of emotional intelligence on career preparation behavior of undergraduates mediating career decision-making autonomy and career adaptability.
The population of this study was 1,520,850 current university students listed on the 2015 record (Korea Educational Development Institute, 2015). 560 students from 8 universities were sampled with a stratified, cluster and proportional sampling under the consideration of the region, major, and gender ratios. A survey questionnaire was conducted to measure the variables of this study. The survey questionnaire consisted career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability and demographical characteristics.
Data were collected through mail and online surveys from October 5th to 14th 2016 with a target sample population of 560 people from 7 universities. Data were collected from 542 people (return rate of 96.7%) of which 488 data were retained for the final analysis (data validity of 87.1%) after excluding insincere response, non-response, outlier. Windows SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 18.0 statistics program were used to identify descriptive statistics of frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation, among others, and to identify the relationship of research model through a structural equation model analysis. Inferential statistics result concluded the standard for statistical significance at 0.05.
The result of this study is as follows: first, the goodness-of-fit of hypothetical structural model of career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy, and career adaptability of undergraduates was satisfactory which confirmed the structural relationships of the variables. Second, emotional intelligence(β=.369), career decision-making autonomy(β=.166) and career adaptability(β=.324) of undergraduates had statistically significant direct effects on career preparation behavior of undergraduates. Third, Emotional intelligence had statistically significant indirect effects on career preparation behavior of undergraduates with the single mediation effect of career decision-making autonomy(B=0.058), career adaptability(B=0.232) and with the dual mediation effect of career decision-making autonomy and career adaptability(B=0.027).
From the results, the following conclusions were made. First, the structural model among career preparation behavior, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy and career adaptability of undergraduates set up in this study was suitable for analyzing empirical data subjecting for undergraduates, and it predicts the structural relationship among variables reasonably. Consequently, the structural model of this study can be developed to a theory of career preparation behavior. Second, emotional intelligence, career decision-making autonomy and career adaptability of undergraduates had a positive direct effect on career preparation behavior of undergraduates. Third, emotional intelligence had a positive indirect effect on career preparation behavior with the single mediation effect of career decision-making autonomy, career adaptability. Emotional intelligence also had a positive indirect effect on career preparation behavior with the dual mediation effect of career decision-making autonomy and career adaptability. As emotional intelligence had a significant positive direct and indirect effects on career preparation behavior, it can be considered as an important variable in acceleration and revelation of career preparation behavior. Moreover, career adaptability takes a crucial role as a mediating variable between emotional intelligence and career preparation behavior, career intervention could be made utilizing career adaptability to facilitate career preparation behavior.
The following recommendations were suggested for future research. First, more diverse sampling is needed for future research that seeks to undertake similar study. Second, longitudinal study may be recommended to identify variables in depth effecting on career preparation behavior. Third, the relationship between various motivations and career preparation behavior can be studied to identify the effects of various motives on career preparation behavior in the context of Korean society. Fourth, other factors, including environmental and contextual factors that affect career preparation behavior, can be investigated with the recognized factors in this research to broaden the understanding of emergent process of career preparation behavior. Fifth, addition to identification of the relationships with dependant variables on one’s career, the identification of relationships with variables such as life of career preparation behavior can be done to develop an extended and integrated model.