Influence of career self-efficacy beliefes on career exploration behavior

Abstract

The study involved 211 female and 47 male (259 total) college students from the State University of New York at New Paltz general population. All data were collected online. It was hypothesized that the sources of career self-efficacy would significantly correlate with and predict career exploration over and above career self-efficacy, and that past performance accomplishments would have the strongest influence. To measure the sources of career self-efficacy the Career Self-Efficacy Sources Scale was created. The Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale- Short Form (Betz, Klein, & Taylor, 1996) was used to measure career self-efficacy. To measure career exploration a revised version of the Career Exploration Survey (Stumpf, Colarelli, & Hartman, 1983) was used. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed a five factor solution with the factors Past Performance Accomplishments, Vicarious Learning, Verbal Persuasion, Emotional Arousal Negative, and Emotional Arousal Positive, was a good fit for the data. The career self-efficacy sources scales also correlated significantly with career self-efficacy. Results of the bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses supported the hypothesis that sources of career self-efficacy beliefs do in fact correlate with and predict career exploration. Performance accomplishments had the strongest influence on career self-efficacy, whereas verbal persuasion was the strongest predictor of career exploration. These results suggest that career counselors should incorporate verbal persuasion in their work with clients to enhance career self-efficacy and career exploration.