Configuration Of Both Parents’ And Childrens’ Perceived Career-specific Parental Behaviors With Chinese Adolescents’ Career Development

Early adolescence is a critical period for individuals’ career development.The acquisition of career decision-making self-efficacy and coping with career ambivalence are among the most important development tasks of adolescence(Kracke,1997).During this period,adolescents experience various changes,therefore successful accomplishment of career development tasks has a significant impact on their subsequent education and career paths.Therefore,examining correlates and precusors of adolescents’ career ambivalence and career decision-making self-efficacy may deepen our understanding of career development during adolescence as well as providing important implications for interventions aiming to promote adolescents’ career development.This study aims to investigate associations between configurations of career-specific parental behaviors and the development of career ambivalence and career decision-making self-efficacy in adolescents,and the mediating role of resilience in relations between various configurations of career-specific parental behaviors and adolescents’ development of career ambivalence and career decision-making selfefficacy.Study 1 aims to identify configurations of parent-and adolescent-reported career-specific parental behaviors at Time 1 using latent profile analysis and to examine relations between identified profiles of career-specific parental behaviors and the career ambivalence and career decision-making self-efficacy.Study 2 aims to investigate changes in career ambivalence and career decision-making self-efficacy from Time 1 to Time 3(one year later)and their relations to various types of career-specific parental behaviors identified in Study 1.Study 3 aims to examine the mediating role of resilience assessed at Time 2 in associations between various configurations of career-specific parental behaviors and adolescents’ career ambivalence and career decision-making self-efficacy.In current studies,a total of 675 adolescents and their parents from four primary and middle schools in Guangzhou were recruited and followed for a year with a 6-month data collection time lag.Main findings were as the follow:(1)Four different potential profiles for career-specific parental behaviors were identified: “Highly neglect-unsupportive group”(characterized by high levels of neglect,low levels of congruent and parental support),“Highly interference-unsupportive group”(characterized by high levels of interference and neglect,low levels of congruent and parental support),“concerned-unsupportive group”(characterized by high levels of congruent,low levels of neglect,interference and parental support),“Highly congruent-supportive group”(characterized by high levels of congruent and parental support,low levels of neglect).(2)Adolescents in the “Highly interference-unsupportive group” reported the significant higher levels of career ambivalence at Time 1 as compared to adolescents in the “concernedunsupportive group” and the “Highly congruent-supportive group”,Adolescents in the “concerned-unsupportive group” and “Highly congruent-supportive group” reported the significant higher levels of career decision-making self-efficacy at Time 1 as compared to adolescents in the “Highly neglect-unsupportive group” and the “Highly interferenceunsupportive group”.(3)Adolescents in the “concerned-unsupportive group” reported the significant higher levels of career ambivalence at Time 1 as compared to Time 3,and they reported the significant lower levels of career decision-making self-efficacy at Time 1 as compared to Time 3.(4)There is no significant difference in adolescents’ career ambivalence at Time 3 across four profiles of career-specific parental behaviors.Additionally,adolescents in the “Highly congruent-supportive group” reported higher levels of career decision-making self-efficacy than did those in the “Highly neglect-unsupportive” group and the “Highly interferenceunsupportive” group.(5)Resilience at Time 2 plays a mediating role between various configurations of careerspecific parental behaviors at Time 1 and career ambivalence at Time 3.Specifically,“Highly congruent-supportive group” relative to “Highly neglect-unsupportive” group and the “Highly interference-unsupportive” group is more conducive to improving adolescents’ resilience and reducing their career ambivalence.(6)Resilience at Time 2 played a mediating role in relations between career-specific parental behaviors at Time 1 and career decision-making self-efficacy at Time 3.Specifically,“Highly congruent-supportive group” relative to “Highly neglect-unsupportive” group and the “Highly interference-unsupportive” group is more conducive to improving adolescents’ resilience and their career decision-making self-efficacy.Based on the above research findings,the conclusion is drawn that career-specific parental behaviors can be identified as a four subgroups,its simple,heterogeneous and meaningful,and the four subgroups have different effects on the career development of adolescents.Resilience is an important mediating process for the subgroups to affect the career development of adolescents.