Research On The Relationship Among Occupational Values, Achievement Motivation And Career Maturity Of Higher Vocational College Students

Career plays a crucial role in the individuals’development process. People’s life quality mainly depends on the results of their career selection. It is particularly urgent to give higher vocational college students proper career guidance to help them successfully obtain employment. This research suggests that career maturity is an appropriate starting point to fully understand the characteristics of vocational students’ occupational development. The career maturity is a readiness state that a person makes career decision which adapts to his or her age and individual development tasks; it is able to forecast the maturity level of the individuals’development of occupational psychology. What psychological factors can predict vocational students’career maturity? We can start from the achievement motivation and occupational values:achievement motivation is the aspiration of individuals to achieve success and it exert positive impact on the achievements of school work and careers, occupational values the social judgment orientation of the benefits people can get from their professional activities, directly impacting occupational behaviors. This study attempts to construct a theory model to forecast career maturity which takes the achievement motivation and the occupational values as influence factors, on the basis of exploring the distribution characteristics of the contemporary higher vocational college students’career maturity and occupational values, so as to provide theoretical support for the career guidance for them.The questionnaires below were used in this study:the career maturity questionnaire composed by Liu Limin, the Chinese edition of achievement motivation scale which is composed by Jesme and Ruygard and translated by Ye Renmin and Hagtvet, and the occupational values questionnaire composed by Ling Wenquan etc. The total of422higher vocational college students participated in this study. They were randomly sampled form Hunan vocational college of safety technology, Hunan network engineering vocational college, Hunan vocational college of science and technology and Hunan engineering polytechnic. The study explored the distribution character and the correlation of the career maturity, the achievement motivation and the occupational values, from five aspects of gender, grade, major and part-time job experience.The results showed as follows:(1) For the career Maturity of vocational college students, there is no significant difference in gender and major, but it is significant different in the aspects of grade and part-time job experience.(2) For the vocational college students’occupational values, there is no significant difference in the there aspects of grade, major and part-time job experience. The participants weighed development and protection higher than reputation. (3) For vocational college students, the development factor and reputation factor of their occupational values were positively correlated with their career maturity.(4) There is significant positive correlation between the vocational college students’achievement motivation and their scores on occupational values scale, development factor and reputation factor. The motivation of pursuing success positively correlates with develop factor and reputation factor, whereas the motivation of avoiding failure positively correlates with the factors of protection and reputation.(5) There is significant positive correlation between the vocational college students’achievement motivation and their career maturity, and the motivation of pursuing success positively correlates with the career maturity, while the motivation of avoiding failure negatively correlates with the career maturity.(6) The achievement motivation and the occupational values of vocational college students can forecast their career maturity (see diagram4-1). What is more, the occupational values directly influences vocational college students’career maturity on one side, and indirectly exerts its impact on the career maturity through the achievement motivation on the other side.