Career Decision Making As A Mediator Between Personality And Career Expectations Among Undergraduate Students In Malawi

Career decision-making is defined as a process of making a choice between particular career alternatives.There is a great deal of pressure upon university students to decide what they want to pursue as a career,yet not enough attention has been given to this process of making career decision.The present study explored the relationship between personality,career decision-making and career expectations as well as the role of career decision making as a mediator between personality and career expectations among Malawian Undergraduates.111 female and 158 male college students,were administered a demographic questionnaire and measures of personality,general decision making,and career expectations.Collected data sets were analyzed by SPSS and PROCESS.Results showed that female students were significantly high in Extraversion than Male students.Management scores were significantly higher in Male students than in female students,whist Neuroticism scores and Intuitive scores were significantly high for Junior graduate students than for the Senior graduate students.Correlation results indicated many correlations,among which are;Conscientiousness positively and significantly correlated with Agreeableness,whilst negatively and significantly correlated with Spontaneous and neuroticism.Career decision making(Dependent,Rational and Avoidant)was found to be a partial mediator between personality and career expectation.The findings indicated that students' personality influences their career decision making which in turn determine their career expectations.Consequently,students' personality needs to be taken into consideration during career decision-making process.Results implications,limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.