The Relationship Of High School Students’ Major Decision-making Self-efficacy, Self-esteem And Social Support

To people, career is more than a way of making a living, but also the arena of realizingpersonal value and development. That high school students choose university majors meanschoosing a future career to a large extent. Whether the major suits their trait is not only in relationto their future career development, but also related to effective utilization of national educationresources. As high school students are not maturity in mental and physical, they are still in theperiod of career exploration and not sure of their education and employment goal. Along with thefierce employment situation, it is difficult for high school students to make the important choice inlife.Although studies have suggested that career decision-making self-efficacy is related toself-esteem, and social support, but so far, most researches are on career decision-makingself-efficacy of college students’ and other groups. The research on the same topic is still rare forhigh school students. Therefore, the relationship between high school students’ self-esteemsituation and the major decision-making self-efficacy is the first concern of this study. Therelationship of the social support and major decision-making self-efficacy is the second problemof this study to explore. Other researches show that, as one of the core contents of self system,self-esteem has a general effect on individual cognition, emotion, motivation and social behavior.And self-esteem often act as a mediate variable.. But so far no research explores whether highschool students’ self-esteem plays a mediating role between their social support and majordecision-making self-efficacy or not. Therefore, this is the third problem of this study to address.503high school students of the two schools in two cities in Shandong province were sampledas subjects. Using the Social Support Rating Scale, Self-esteem Scale and Major Decision-makingSelf-efficacy Scale for High School Student as the tool, this study discussed the characteristics ofthe high school students’ major decision-making self-efficacy, and the relationship between majordecision-making self-efficacy and social support, self-esteem, aiming to guide high schoolstudents in their education and employment. The results showed that:(1) In general, the level of high school students’ major decision-making self-efficacy is abovethe medium level.(2) The significant differences of high school students’ major decision-making self-efficacy arefound in gender, grade, urban and rural, or whether they are the only child or not..(3) The total score and each dimension score of high school students’ social support andself-esteem have significant positive correlations to the total score and each dimension score ofmajor decision-making self-efficacy. And there is very significant positive correlation betweenhigh school students’ self-esteem and the total score and each dimension score of social support.(4) The total score and each dimension score of social support and self-esteem cansignificantly predict their major decision-making self-efficacy and each dimension.(5) Self-esteem partially mediate the relation between objective support, subjective supportand major decision-making self-efficacy and each dimension, and fully mediate the relationbetween the social support availability dimension and major decision-making self-efficacy andeach dimension.