Research On The Work Values Of Shanghai Post-80’s Employees With Different Levels Of Education

Work values play a significant role in one‘s vocational choice. Recently an increasingnumber of theorists and practitioners at home and abroad regard work values as theirresearch foci. After extensively reviewing the domestic and overseas literature onwork values studies, the author found that indigenous research scarcely investigatesthe influence of educational factor on work values. Additionally most of theparticipants of domestic studies are in-school students (especially college students)rather than on-the-job workers. As a result, in order to find out whether educationallevels will affect one‘s work values, the author has conducted a quantitative researchon the post-80‘s employees in Shanghai, particularly including those who onlyreceived high school education or even below and those who graduated fromvocational or technical schools. On the one hand, the author has probed into andcompared the work values of the post-80‘s generation with various educational levelsin Shanghai; on the other hand, she also hopes that this research can slightly enrichthe Chinese indigenous studies on work values.By re-translating and modifying Ning Weiwei‘s (1996) revised version of DonaldSuper‘s Work Values Inventory (SWVI), the author carried out the research with196post-80‘s employees working in Shanghai. They almost covered all the levels on theladder of Chinese education: high school or below, vocational school, bachelors andmasters or beyond. The research findings are briefly as follows:1) Statistics reveals that the modified SWVI has good reliability and is alsoapplicable for the Chinese post-80‘s workers in Shanghai.2) The post-80‘s employees in Shanghai as a whole generally attach muchimportance to all the15work values dimensions, of which the most important are"way of life","achievement","supervisory relationships","associates","intellectual stimulation","prestige" and the least important are "surroundings","variety","aesthetic","security","management". The answers of the two openquestions indicate that they list "career development","income and welfare" and"interests and personality" as the most important, and that less than50%of themknow exactly what their ideal jobs are and have a clear career plan. 3) The university educated (bachelors and masters or beyond) and non-universityeducated (high school or below and vocational school) have relatively highconsistency in the ranks of the15work values dimensions. But still the twogroups differ from each other in the following dimensions:"way of life","variety","achievement","security","prestige","economic return", and"supervisory relationships". The university educated value all the sevendimensions more than the non-university educated. Furthermore, masters orbeyond care more about "management" than bachelors and vocational schoolgraduates pay more attention to "variety" than those graduated from high schoolsor below.4) Other demographical factors such as gender, year of birth, working years andcorporate type also have influence on work values more or less.