The Relationship Between Occupational Self-Efficacy And College Students' Career Planning

This paper summarizes one of Bandura's social cognitive theory, Occupational Self-Efficacy Theory, and the Career Planning Theory, an important component of the western human resource management theory. Based on systematic introduction of relevant researches, this paper further explores the applied research of Occupational Self-Efficacy Theory in the field of career planning in order to make it more realistic, scientific and unified. The testees of this research are college students of different grades. By summing up previous studies on the Occupational Self-Efficacy Theory, Career Planning Theory and their applications, the author tries to seek the balance among college students, colleges, and employers during the process of employment preparation and implementation, to understand the characteristics of college student's occupational self-efficacy and strengthen its positive impact on career planning, and to expand the research and application of the Occupational Self-Efficacy Theory to provide a basis for student's scientific career planning. Through difference analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis, this paper gets the following findings:(1) Significant differences in occupational self-efficacy exist among college students of different gender, grade and major. The occupational self-efficacy level of freshmen is significantly higher than that of sophamores, juniors and seniors, and the occupational self-efficacy level of girls is higher than that of boys. (2) Distinct gender differences in occupational self-efficacy exist between traditional male and female occupations, except for such individual vocations as doctors and lawyers. (3) No clear gender differences are found in the aspect of personal security and prestige and status during student's career planning; while in the aspect of development trend, gender differences do exist as girls score higher than boys. (4) Occupational self-efficacy has a positive correlation with career planning in the aspect of personal security and development trend, but no relation in the aspect of prestige and status. (5) Personal security, prestige and status have forecasting effect on occupational self-efficacy, and comparatively speaking, prestige and status have more significant effect. The research shows that occupational self-efficacy has stronge influence on college students'career planning. Therefore, colleges should raise students'occupational self-efficacy, expand the application of Occupational Self-Efficacy Theory in the practice of students'career planning, help students build target system for career planning so that career planning education can be carried out rhythmically to help students build up scientific concept of career choice and raise their occupational self-efficacy.