DIFFERENCES IN DIMENSIONS OF CAREER MOTIVATION BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC GRADUATE STUDENTS BY AGE AND GENDER
Open Access
- Author:
- Lopes, Tobin
- Graduate Program:
- Workforce Education and Development
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 21, 2006
- Committee Members:
- David Lynn Passmore, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
William J Rothwell, Committee Member
Frederick Dudley Loomis Jr., Committee Member
Mosuk Chow, Committee Member - Keywords:
- career motivation
culture
graduate students
international - Abstract:
- In 2005 the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a tremendous growth of foreign-born workers in the United States with more than a quarter of them (26.5%) being in management, professional or related positions. This demonstrated a need to study differences between people from multiple cultures and the impact those differences may have on the work environment. While a review of the research literature showed cultural differences in motivation, there was no evidence of extant studies on how career motivation might vary among people from different cultures. Using a London’s Career Motivation Inventory as a theoretical framework and a web-based version of a research-validated instrument, this study sought to identify the relationship between a student’s nationality, age, and gender with career motivation. A review of the literature detailed past studies that identified weak relationships between age and gender and the three dimensions of career motivation: career resilience, career insight, and career identity. Literature regarding cultural differences in motivation seemed to indicate there would be some differences in career motivation, career resilience and career identity in particular, between the two groups. There are, however, individualist people in collectivist cultures and collectivist people in individualist cultures. Over the course of three weeks, more than 1,400 graduate students originating from 51 nations responded to the survey. Multivariate multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses that no relationship existed between student nationality, age and gender and the career motivation dimensions. Although there were some significant differences between age groups while accounting for gender and student nationality, there was no evidence to reject the null hypothesis that there was no difference in career motivation dimensions between domestic and international students at Pennsylvania State University. Although the conclusions about career motivation and its relationships to student nationality, age, and gender from this study are limited, the power of the conclusions was very high due to the number of respondents. The first question of this study dealt with student nationality and its relationship to career resilience, career insight, and career identity. The analysis showed that no relationship existed. Differences between the cultures could have been masked by the diversity of cultures that made up the international respondents. The results of the present study indicate relationships between age and the three dimensions of career motivation did exist. Women showed an increase in career resilience levels throughout their entire career life. For men there was an increase in career resilience from trial- to mid-career. There was not a significant difference between late-career men and the other two male age groups. In the case of career insight and career identity, the results were virtually identical. Older women had higher levels of both insight and identity than trial-career men and women. Mid-career men also showed higher levels of career insight and career identity than trial-career men. For women career identity increased over their entire career although the difference between the two older groups was marginally insignificant. These results provided support for the existence of the relationship between age and career motivation dimensions and provided further clarity on the relationship between age and career motivation. The last question of the study regarded gender’s relationship to career motivation. The results of this study supported those previous findings of no existent significant relationship. Several recommendations for future research are made. A significant limitation of this study was treating the international students as a homogeneous group. By partitioning out the international students into their respective nations, researchers can come to a greater understanding of cultural influences on career motivation. In order to be able to generalize further than populations at large public American universities future research should address students at different types of universities and colleges. Researchers should also study students in different countries who attend schools or universities with similar factors such as student population, endowment, and degrees offered. This would offer an opportunity to study whether or not career motivation varies from culture-to-culture instead of from person-to-person living in the city but from different countries/cultures. Another interesting question for future study examines whether international students’ motivation changes over time, specifically, over their first four to five years in the United States. The instrument used in this study is a self-report instrument. This lends the measures from the instrument open to respondent bias. Successful development of an assessment based on multiple sources would be an asset to the future of career motivation research.