Personality, career decision self-efficacy and commitment to the career choices process among Chinese graduate students

This study examined the mediating effect of career decision self-efficacy on the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and the career commitment process (i.e., vocational commitment and the tendency to foreclose) in a sample of 785 Chinese graduate students. The multiple regression analyses showed that neuroticism and conscientiousness related significantly to progress in vocational commitment both directly and indirectly through career decision self-efficacy. High agreeableness related to less premature foreclosure. In addition, career decision self-efficacy associated with greater progress in vocational commitment but also a strong tendency to foreclose. The implications for career development theory and practice are discussed.     

Making Sense of the Barriers Women Face in the Information Technology Work Force: Standpoint Theory, Self-disclosure, and Causal Maps

Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., standpoint theory and the communication boundary management theory) were used to investigate the comments that 39 female information technology (IT) employees made during focus groups as they discussed issues related to workplace barriers and voluntary turnover. The revealed causal mapping method was used to analyze the women’s responses. Voluntary turnover decisions were influenced by work schedule flexibility, family responsibilities, work stress, job qualities, and lack of consistency in workplace policies. Perceived barriers to promotion were linked to lack of respect, ageism, stress, and work schedule flexibility. Differences emerged between explicitly stated and implicitly embedded responses. Women explicitly discussed issues consistent with previous IT research; however their implicit statements often addressed barriers not commonly linked with IT advancement and turnover concerns.     

Limits and province of levels of processing: considerations of a construct

The limitations and the proper domain of the levels-of-processing construct are considered. Following a sketch of the historical context in which the construct was proposed, some of its empirical and conceptual shortcomings are noted. The argument is then advanced that the notion of memory being determined by depth of processing should be regarded as a functional or purely psychological heuristic, immune to certain criticisms appropriate to the realms of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.     

Empirical fear profiles among American youth

Fears among children can range from relatively innocuous fears of simple objects to significant phobias that affect youths' everyday functioning in the home, school, or community environments. This study investigated empirically derived fear profiles among American youth ages 7-19 (N=556). Based upon youths' scores on the 5 factors of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-II (FSSC-II; Burnham & Gullone (Behav Res Ther, 35, 1997)), multistage Euclidean grouping was applied and produced 5 replicable fear cluster profiles with unique contours. Logistic regression odds ratios revealed specific associations of profile group membership with demographic characteristics such as child age, sex, and ethnicity.     

Your work is interfering with our life! The influence of a significant other on employee job search activity

This research draws on family systems theory to examine the influence of the significant other on employees’ job search behaviours. Data from 102 matched pairs of employees and their significant others showed that significant others’ perception of the employee's work‐to‐family conflict was positively related to the employee's job search activity after controlling for employee self‐reported work‐to‐family conflict. Contributions and implications are discussed.     

Validating a New Measure of Self-Complexity

The construct of self-complexity has been recognized as important for understanding psychological adjustment. However, research in this area has been impeded by measurement problems. In particular, the most commonly used measure, Linville's (1985, 1987) H statistic, cannot assess this construct appropriately. In this article, we present a new measure designed to tap two components of self-complexity separately: the number of self-aspects and the average distinction among them. We conducted a validation study with 131 Chinese college students. The results indicate that (a) this new measure is not confounded with conscious social desirability bias, (b) it has incremental validity beyond existing measures, and (c) the two components as assessed by this new measure are relatively independent and have different psychological functions. We discuss the implications of these findings for future studies of self-complexity and clinical practice.