Study On The Relationships Among Locus Of Control, Family Support, School Support And Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy

Students'employment has become one of the most concerned social problems and it needs to be solved urgently. From a macro perspective, the declining scarcity of highly educated population and the imbalance of supply and demand on labor market have undoubtedly increased the pressure on graduates'employment. However, apart from these structural factors, graduates are also subject to other micro-level subjective and objective factors in the process of career decision-making.Career decision-making self-efficacy is an important predictor variable of career decision-making behavior and outcomes (Taylor & Betz, 1983; Robbins, 1985; Osipow, 1987; Luzzo, 1993, 1995; Betz, Klein, & Taylor, 1996), and it was affected by personality (Tokar, Fischer, & Subich, 1998; Ganske & Ashby, 2007; Jin, et al., 2009) and social support (Guay, Sene'cal, Gauthier, & Fernet, 2003; Ali, McWhirter, & Chronister, 2005; Gushue & Whitson, 2006). However, scholars have done researches on the relationships between personality traits and career decision-making self-efficacy at different depth, and the relationship between locus of control and career decision-making self-efficacy was rarely discussed. Second, although the relationship between social support and career decision-making self-efficacy has been widely proved, the measurement of social support was general and indirect, so the effects of families and schools in students'career decision-making process have not been fully explored; Finally, scholars have often discussed the relationships between personality, social support and related factors in career decision-making respectively, while the complex mechanisms and the boundary conditions of existing effects among personality traits, social support and career decision-making lack a systematic study.According to these research gaps, this paper aimed to explore disparities among individuals who have different locus of control in family support, school support, and career decision-making self-efficacy; Second, we developed special measurement of received family and school support in career choice process of graduates, and explored the effects of different support on career decision-making self-efficacy; after this, we made a further exploration of the partial mediation role of family and school support in the relationship between locus of control and career decision-making self-efficacy, and the moderating role of locus of control in the relationship between family support, school support and career decision-making self-efficacy.In this study, we used Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (Betz, Klein, & Taylor, 1996), the "Internality" sub-scale of "Internality, Powerful Others, and Chance Scale"(Levenson, 1981), self-developed Family Support Scale, and School Support Scale to measure the level of career decision-making self-efficacy, locus of control, perceived family support and school support. Snowball sampling method was used within Jilin University and the network investigation was completed through Sojump.com within 1 week and 567 valid responses were received.We firstly used Descriptive Statistic Analysis to describe the demographic characteristics, the overall level and degree of dispersion of locus of control, family support, school support and career decision-making self-efficacy of the sample. Second, did basic reliability and validity tests on Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form and "Internality" sub-scale; and then did full reliability and validity tests on self-developed Family Support Scale and School Support Scale, including consistency reliability test, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, convergent validity and discriminant validity tests. Thirdly, used one-way ANOVA and Independent Sample T Test to explore the role of control variables. Finally, used different regression models to examine the relationships between variables.The statistical analysis showed the rationality of the theoretical model "locus of control -- family support, school support -- career decision-making self-efficacy" and got the following conclusions:(1) Internal locus of control has an important positive effect on career decision -making self-efficacy.(2) Internal locus of control has a significant positive impact on family support, and school support, and locus of control affects more on perceived school support than perceived family support.(3) Family support and school support have significant positive influences on career decision-making self-efficacy, and family support and school support have similar strength.(4) Family support and school support take a partial mediation role in the relationship between locus of control and career decision-making self-efficacy, and this mediating effect is far less than the direct effect of locus of control on career decision-making self-efficacy.(5) This study did not confirm the moderating role of locus of control in the relationship between family support, school support and career decision-making self-efficacy.(6) Boys got significant higher scores than girls in overall career decision-making self-efficacy, planning and problem solving dimensions.(7) Samples who have graduate degree or above got significant higher scores than those who have undergraduate degree in the overall career decision-making self-efficacy, planning and self-appraisal dimensions, but the distinction effects of degree were not stable.(8) Samples who were in Humanities and Social Science disciplines got significant higher scores than those who were in Science and Engineering disciplines in overall career decision-making self-efficacy, occupational information and goal selection dimensions.(9) City samples got significant higher scores than rural samples in the overall career decision-making self-efficacy, self-appraisal, occupational information, goal selection, planning dimensions and locus of control and family support.These conclusions were discussed in theory and practice, and we provided an amount of advice for individual, family and school to improve students'career decision-making, the article poited out limitations of this study and future research directions at the last.