The Relationship Between College Students' Social Comparison And Career Expectation

The current research established the theoretical framework of college students' social comparison based on literature reviews and opinions from relevant experts, then formed the preliminary inventory after open-end questions and interviews on college students, and finally developed the formal inventory after reliability and validity analysis based on results from 224 college students. It also investigated the status of and relationship between college students' social comparison and career expectation. The results showed that:(1)4 factors were found in the inventory after factorial analysis, they were supportiveness,comparison disposition,reference and experience respectively, which was consistent with the prior theoretical framework, the inventory was also with satisfactory reliability and validity.(2) Female college students scored higher than their male counterparts in supportiveness and comparison experience.(3) No significant grade effects were found for any of the factors in the inventory, or for the overall status.(4) No significant grade and gender interactions were found for any of the factors in the inventory, or for the overall status.(5) There were significant gender effects in dimensions such as reputation, consistency in college students' career expectation. Males preferred reputation while females preferred consistency in their career expectation.(6) Significant grade effect was found in the dimension of self-development in college students' career expectation, the higher their grade, the more intense self-development expectation they exhibited.(7) Significant positive correlation were found among supportiveness of social comparison, reputation dimension and overall performance of career expectation, there also existed significant positive correlation among comparison disposition, reference of social comparison, and three factors of career expectation. The experience dimension of the social comparison, reputation, consistency and overall performance of career expectation also correlated significantly.