The Relationship Among College Students' Personal Planning, Self-esteem And Social Support

Orientation towards future events or outcomes is an important feature of individuals'thoughts and behaviors. Future orientation, defined as how adolescents anticipate and construct their personal future, is a multidimensional and multistage phenomenon. Jari-Erik Nurmi, a Finland psychologist, put forward individual future orientation process model from the approach of cognition-motivation, among which planning is an important process. In the life span, individuals are constantly thinking about and planning for their own future, which is particularly important for adolescents. Future orientation, as an important aspect in individual's development, is effected by multi-factors, including individual cognition, and social-cultural background. This study would to investigate the developmental characteristics of adolescents'future orientation through the inspection of personal planning process in the context of China, and explore the relationship among personal planning, self-esteem and social support.This thesis started with a relatively detailed review about research on adolescents'future orientation both at home and abroad, and theories or some important works on adolescents'future orientation, self-esteem and social support. And also the analyses of the current research situation and existing problems were made. On this basis, 461 first-year and third-year college students recruited from a university in QingDao city. Adolescent Future Orientation, Social Support Scale and Self-Esteem Scale were applied.The results are as follows.1. Significant differences are found in gender and major to college students'personal planning development. Females reported the higher level of personal planning than males. Artistic Designing students reported the higher level of personal planning than the other two major students.2. Significant differences are found in grade and major to college students'self-esteem development. The third-year college students reported the higher level of self esteem than the first-year students; the Polymer Materials and Engineering students reported the lower level of self esteem than the other two major students.3. Significant differences are found in gender and major to college students' social support development. Females reported the higher level of social support than males; the Artistic Designing students reported the higher level of social support than the other major students.4. College students'social support,self-esteem and personal planning were significantly correlated. Social support could predict personal planning directly, and self-esteem was also as a mediator between social support and personal planning.