A Relevant Research On Occupational Value And Self-esteem, Achievement Motivation Of University Students

For college students, occupational value is a conceptual system demonstrated by the relative stability, generalization and dynamic functions when they're making career choice. It embodies the general values of college student's career choices, influences the choice of occupation, and affects their future career development.Research on college student's occupational issues has been always an important issue in western counties psychological study field. Some of representative studies include: A occupational value survey of all-round American college students by the U.S psychologist Rosonberg, and later, a similar survey by Osaka conducted fairly characteristics. Our study of occupational value started in the1980s. The connotation of occupational value of China's college students is quite different with the foreign courtiers college students', most of foreign students participated in work, but our students not. Our domestic study focus on different career construction also the comparison and characteristics with professional values of different groups of college students.In this regard, some compared studies engaged in included the occupational value research of collage students by YuHaibo(2001). On one hand, he explored the career value structure of college students; on the other hand, he explored those related factors about different gender groups, different subject groups'different grades and etc. These studies provide the theoretical basis for supplement the content of college students'occupational value theory.Self-esteem is one of important aspects of self-system; it plays a special role both in the social and individual spiritual life, and attracted psychologists'much attention, Self-esteem as an intermediary personality variable plays an important role to individual cognition emotion and social behaviors. And occupational value as a professional evaluation of the cognitive and emotional preference, as a career–oriented converter of college students'career choice, there must be a link between the two. Self-esteem has a major impact on the formation and development of occupational value. The theory on the relationship between self-esteem and occupational values have been demonstrated in the theory of occupational values have been demonstrated in the theory of occupational values Super consider that occupational value has grown up with the development of the individual's self-concept.Achievement motivation, as one of the motivations of social motivations play an important role to individual activities, and it has influenced career choice. Mclland found that people with low achievement are prone to take challenging and groundbreaking work, and dare to make decisions in their work. Liangliping(1998) found that, collage students found to have high expectations of success, and the negative achievement motivation is week, by inspecting the achievement motivation and behaviors of collage students. Students with high achievement paid close attention and concern to realistic-ego and idealistic-ego on career value and standards .Overall, the empirical research on the relationship between achievement motivation and occupational value is still relatively scarce, and not systematic, need to be enriched and perfected.Overview previous studies Sagie et al proposed the occupational value benefit model--- the theoretical model of relationship between occupational value and personality variables. He believes that there's interaction between motivation and career values, and including two variables: one is moderators it refers to the relevant variables are different, the intermediary variable is one part of causal relationship, and it directly explain the relationship to one variable to another.Achievement motivation as the impetus of behaviors has a direct effect on occupational values. What a kind of roles does self-esteem play to the occupational value? Sagie's theory had not been covered to these points. However, according to the self-concept theory of occupational value, it exists some correlation between self-concept theories of occupational value. If self-esteem was directly related to achievement motivation, thus to occupational value, achievement motivation as the impetus of behaviors is probably being the intermediary variable between self-esteem and occupational values. In other words, self-esteem plays an important role to occupational value through the intermediary role of achievement motivation.The present study examined the characteristics of occupational value and the relationships between occupational value and Self-esteem, Achievement motivation by asking 344 university students to fill out questionnaires.The result indicated:(1)The dimension of self-development in occupational value was reported as the most important aspect for university students to choose their jobs, and the dimension of reputation was not valued same as the first two dimensions.(2)There were significant group differences in occupational value across gender, family origin, sibling status, and grades. The study shows that: firstly, the native place effect is statistically significant on"reputation". The students form rural areas rate"reputation"less important than those form urban areas. Secondly,"self-development"has much to do with the students'being the single child in the family or not .The single child in the family tends to rate"self-development"less important than those who are not. Thirdly, when we take grade effect into consideration, it is found that the second year in the university is the key period in the development of the occupational values. And the senior students lay more emphases on"self-development"than the junior while they pay less attention to"reputation"and"welfare"than the junior. And the senior students lay more emphases on"self-development"than the junior while they pay less attention to"reputation"and"welfare"than the junior. And lastly, the major --- the literal arts and natural science are not statistically significant on"reputation","welfare"and"self-development".(3)As for the correlation between"self-esteem"and"occupational value", it is discovered that the more self-esteem one has, the more emphases one attaches to"self-development"; as for the correlation between the"achievement motivation"and"occupation values", students with a strong achievement consider more"reputation"and"self-development"that the job could offer; and as for the correlation among"occupational values","self-esteem"and"achievement motivation", achievement motivation is the mediator between the other two. In this process,"self-esteem"influence and"self-development"in the occupational values through achievement motivation;"self-development"in the occupation value through achievement motivation;"self-esteem"and"achievement motivation"can't predict"occupational value".