Calling and Career Outcome Expectations: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy

• In Event: Motivation and Engagement in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

Links between young adults’ sense of calling, career outcome expectations and self-efficacy were examined in a sample of 855 students from three universities in Atlantic Canada. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that participants’ presence of and search for calling accounted for a small but significant portion of the variance in career outcome expectations. Mediation analysis revealed that the influence of both presence of and search for calling on occupational outcome expectations appears to be fully mediated by occupational self-efficacy. Although several limitations must be acknowledged when interpreting the results, the pattern of findings suggests that the relation between sense of calling and expectations for a successful future occupational outcome is predominantly indirect, working through influencing students’ occupational self-efficacy.

Author

• Jose F. Domene, University of New Brunswick