Calling and Career Outcome Expectations

Abstract

Links between young adults’ sense of calling, career outcome expectations, and self-efficacy were examined in a sample of 855 undergraduate 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, conducted separately for each subdimension of calling, revealed that self-efficacy partially mediated the relation between purposeful work and outcome expectations, and fully mediated the relation for the calling dimensions of search for purposeful work, presence of transcendent summons, and presence of a prosocial orientation. 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.

Keywords

calling self-efficacy career outcome expectations college students

In the past 20 years, a small but expanding body of literature has emerged within vocational psychology about the concept of calling as it relates to career development. This literature encompasses efforts to define and understand the nature of calling (Dik, Duffy, & Eldridge, 2009; Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007; Elangovan, Pinder, & McLean, 2010; Elliott, 1992; French & Domene, 2010; Green, 2003; Hunter, Dik, & Banning, 2010), to explore the links between calling and various aspects of career development (Duffy, Allan, & Dik, 2011; Duffy, Dik, & Steger, 2011; Hall & Chandler, 2005; Sellers, Thomas, Batts, & Ostman, 2005; Steger, Pickering, Shin, & Dik, 2009; Woitowicz, 2009; Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997), and to develop career counseling interventions related to the concept (Dik et al., 2009; Dik & Steger, 2008). Although this research has been conducted almost exclusively within an English-speaking North American context, it has become evident that the concept of calling is salient for a substantial proportion of the population (Duffy & Selacek, 2007; Peterson, Park, Hall, & Seligman, 2009).

Contemporary Understandings of Calling

Several definitions of calling have emerged in the psychological literature. Elangovan, Pinder, and McLean (2010) define calling as motivating individuals to action, providing an individual with a clarity of purpose, and having a prosocial dimension. Constructing her definition from information collected from adults who self-defined as having a calling, Elliott (1992) described the phenomenon as work that one felt passionate about, compelled to engage in, and that one was intended for. French and Domene’s (2010) examination of the meaning of calling in female students at a Christian university in Canada expands on this definition. They found that the experience of calling involves a distinct feeling of intensity and passion, a focus on improving the lives of others, a sense of having to sacrifice other areas of life to pursue one’s calling, and a desire to facilitate the discovery of calling in others. Similarly, Hunter, Dik, and Banning (2010) found that university students in the United States experience calling as originating from external guiding forces, being something that uniquely fits the person, resulting in well-being, and having altruistic features. Elliott, French, and Domene, and Hunter and colleagues all conceptualize calling broadly, as something that may be (but is not necessarily) religious and that extends across the different domains of a person’s life. However, Elangovan and colleagues propose that the experience of calling may differ according to whether it is experienced as religious or secular, and whether it is experienced as being specifically work related or encompassing other life roles. Supporting this proposition, Green (2003) in her examination of the nature of calling in Christian and Jewish adults in the labor force, concluded that there is a mystical dimension to calling in this population that distinguishes their experience of calling from that found by Elliott.

One approach to calling that has generated a substantial amount of empirical research is Dik, Duffy, and colleagues’ conceptualization of the phenomenon as originating from sources external to the self, generating a sense of purpose and meaning, and being oriented toward others (Dik & Duffy, 2009; Dik et al., 2009; Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007). They also distinguish between the presence of a calling in people’s lives, and people’s sense of wanting but not yet finding such a calling, which they describe as the search for a calling. These researchers also have developed the Calling and Vocation Questionnaire (CVQ; Dik, Eldridge, Steger, & Duffy, 2012), a self-report instrument designed to systematically assess people’s sense calling as defined by the researchers’ approach to understanding the construct. It is Dik, Duffy, and colleagues’ conceptualization of calling that informs the present study.

Influences of Calling

Individuals’ sense of calling has been linked to several important aspects of functioning at work. Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, and Schwartz (1997) examined how conceptualizing work as a calling (as opposed to a job or career) influences satisfaction in employees of two postsecondary institutions in the United States. They found that employees who perceived their work to be a calling experienced more work and life satisfaction than their peers. Examining the experiences of Christian women who were balancing parenting with careers in academia, Sellers, Thomas, Batts, and Ostman (2005) found that participants’ sense of being called to their work was an important force in maintaining their ongoing involvement and passion for their career. Calling has been associated with career commitment, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and the intention to withdrawal from one’s work in a sample of employees at a large university in the United States (Duffy et al., 2011).

Relations between calling and aspects of career and academic development also have been found in university students. Duffy and Sedlacek (2007) discovered that first-year university students’ sense of calling is a moderate predictor of their decidedness about their future career, and their comfort with their choice. Additionally, within Steger, Pickering, Shin, and Dik (2009) broader examination of whether calling is better conceptualized as a religious or secular experience, calling emerged as a direct predictor of positive work attitudes in a sample of first-year psychology students from the United States. In terms of academic development, Woitowicz (2009) found that the presence of and, to a lesser extent, the search for, a calling were related to intrinsic, extrinsic, and amotivation aspects of academic motivation in a sample of postsecondary students from Canada and the United States. Also, in a recent study of undergraduate students from the United States, the relation between calling and academic satisfaction was found to be fully mediated by their career decision self-efficacy and work hope (Duffy et al., 2011).

Calling, Outcome Expectations, and Self-efficacy

Noticeably absent from the literature is any substantive examination of the potential connections between young adults’ sense of calling and their expectations for a positive career outcome in the future. This gap in the literature is somewhat surprising given the nature of outcome expectations, which has been conceptualized as the imagined consequences of engaging in a course of action (Bandura, 1986, 2001). Logically, it would seem reasonable that individuals who feel compelled to pursue a particular career path, particularly when they attribute that compulsion to external spiritual forces, would envision positive outcomes associated with pursuing that career path. Similarly, it seems reasonable to expect that individuals who perceive themselves as pursuing work that is meaningful and has a greater purpose would have more positive outcome expectations than those who do not perceive their future career in this way.

Existing research on the links between calling and career outcome expectations is extremely limited. One exception is Woitowicz and Domene’s (2011) recent study of the links between outcome expectations, sense of calling, type of occupation to which a person aspired, and gender in a sample of Canadian university and college students, which revealed that the presence of a calling was a strong, positive predictor of career outcome expectations. Similarly, Dik et al., (2008) found a significant correlation between outcome expectation strivings and the presence of a calling in undergraduate students from the United States.

When considering the potential connections between people’s sense of calling and their career outcome expectations, it is useful to adopt a Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) framework, because this theory contains one of the most extensive articulations of outcome expectations found within the vocational psychology literature (Fouad & Guillen, 2006; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). Within this theoretical framework, calling could be conceptualized as part of the overall set of learning experiences that influence people’s career outcome expectations. Within SCCT, learning experiences influence outcome expectations directly and also indirectly, through the mediating variable of self-efficacy. Indeed, existing research suggests that at least some dimensions of calling are related to self-efficacy, particularly efficacy for making career decisions (Dik, Sargent, and Steger, 2008; Duffy et al., 2011). Given the propositions of SCCT, emerging evidence of a link between self-efficacy and calling, and the well-established connections between self-efficacy and outcome expectations (Bandura, 2001; Betz & Hackett, 2006), it is probable that part of the influence of calling on career outcome expectations occurs through the mediating effect of self-efficacy. Also, unclear is the relative strength of the direct and indirect relations between calling and career outcome expectations.

Present Study

Building on the work of Dik and colleagues (2008) and Woitowicz and Domene (2011), the present study was designed to examine the proposition that undergraduate university students’ sense of calling is a predictor of their career outcome expectations and to explore whether the relation is a direct one, or mediated through students’ occupational self-efficacy. Dik and colleagues’ model of calling was used in the study, where calling is conceptualized as having two dimensions (presence of and search for calling), each of which is composed of three subscales. Three sets of hypotheses were tested in this study; the first two followed from existing research on calling and the propositions of SCCT, and the third was exploratory in nature:

Together, university students’ presence of and search for calling account for a significant amount of the variance in postsecondary students’ career outcome expectations, even when controlling for salient background characteristics.

The influence of presence of and search for calling on expectations for future career outcomes is partially mediated by self-efficacy; that is, both the direct and indirect (through self-efficacy) effects of calling on career outcome expectations are significant.

The subscales of calling (i.e., presence of transcendent summons, search for transcendent summons, the presence of purposeful work, search for purposeful work, presence of prosocial orientation, and search for prosocial orientation) are associated with career outcome expectations, and this relation is partially mediated by self-efficacy.

Method

Participants

The sample was drawn from a larger study of social support and career outcome expectations in postsecondary education. Participants consisted of 855 first- and second- year undergraduate students recruited from three universities in Atlantic Canada. The mean age for the participants was 21.49 years (SD = 4.82), 66.5% of participants were female, and a vast majority of the participants were English speaking. (For language spoken at home [LSH], English = 93.5%, French = 2.5%, Other = 4.0%.) In terms of ethnicity, participants were predominantly of European ancestry excluding Latino/Hispanic (87.1%), with the next two most frequently reported ethnicities being Asia including Middle Eastern (5.9%), and North American Aboriginal (2.9%).

Instruments

Calling

Participants’ sense of calling was assessed using the CVQ (Dik et al., 2012). This 24-item scale reflects Dik, Duffy, and colleagues’ conceptualization of calling, and assesses six dimensions of the meaning of calling and vocation in university students: The presence of and search for a sense of transcendent summons, the presence of and search for purposeful work, and the presence of and search for a prosocial orientation. The instrument also yields information on respondents’ overall sense of the presence of a calling in their life, and overall sense of searching for a calling. Research on the validity of the instrument reveals that it represents a general, meaning-oriented conceptualization of calling extending beyond purely religious conceptualizations, and is associated with work hope, prosocial work motivation, life meaning, and the search for life meaning (Dik et al., 2012). This research also has shown that the different dimensions of the scale have good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s α scores ranging from .85 to .92 and test–retest reliability over a 1-month period (r ranging from .62 to .67). Similar results emerged in the present study, with presence of calling (α = .87) and search for calling (α = .88) both having strong internal consistences. However, the reliabilities of each individual subscale varied more widely: presence of a transcendent summons (α = .66); search for a transcendent summons (α = .80); presence of purposeful work (α = .80); search for purposeful work (α = .84); presence of a prosocial orientation (α = .76); and search for a prosocial orientation (α = .88).

Career outcome expectations

Expectations about future career outcomes were assessed using McWhirter, Crothers, and Rasheed’s (2000) Vocational Outcome Expectations scale (VOE). Grounded in SCCT, this unidimensional scale was designed to assess youths’ overall sense of being able to achieve a successful vocational outcome. It is composed of six 4-point items ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” and contains items such as, “My career planning will lead to a satisfying career for me” and “I will be successful in my chosen career/occupation.” It has previously been used to examine the effects of vocational education programs (McWhirter et al., 2000), career aspirations of rural youth (Ali & Saunders, 2009), and the career development of international students attending an American university (Reynolds & Constantine, 2007). McWhirter and colleagues report adequate test–retest reliability (r = .59 over a 9-week period) and good internal consistency (α = .83) for the VOE. In the present study, the internal consistency of the scale also was strong (α = .94).

Occupational self-efficacy

Students’ sense of efficacy for engaging in the actions they perceive to be a part of their future occupation was assessed using the short-form, English language version of the Occupational Self-Efficacy scale (Rigotti, Schyns, & Mohr, 2008; Schyns & von Collani, 2002). This instrument consists of six 5-point scale items ranging from “not true at all” to “’mostly true,” and asking respondents to rate their agreement with such statements as “I feel prepared for most of the demands of my job” and “I can remain calm when facing difficulties in my job because I can rely on my abilities.” In the present study, items were modified to reflect students’ anticipated future occupation. Evidence of construct validity for the scale is provided by the emergence of theoretically appropriate relations with measures of job satisfaction, commitment, performance, and work insecurity. Rigotti and colleagues found high levels of internal consistency for the English language version of the scale in a sample of adults from the United Kingdom (α = .90). Adequate levels of internal consistency also emerged for the scale in the present study (α = .86).

Additional variables

The participant characteristics of sex, age, and LSH were coded from participant responses to survey items assessing these variables. Given the relatively low numbers of students who reported speaking French or another language at home, responses to this survey question were recoded to form a dichotomous LSH variable (English vs. Other). The final variable used in the analyses, socioeconomic status (SES), was approximated from participants’ reports of the highest completed level of education for each parent/step-parent, on a 7-point scale ranging from elementary school to a graduate degree.

Procedures

Participants for the larger study were recruited using a combination of electronic advertisements distributed to students’ university e-mail addresses and brief in-class presentations. Surveys were administered online, and took approximately 20 min to complete. As an incentive, students who completed the survey were eligible to receive a $10 electronic gift certificate to their choice of a major online retailer or a clearinghouse for registered Canadian charities. All procedures in the study were reviewed by the University of New Brunswick Research Ethics Board.

Results

Preliminary Data Screening

Data screening revealed a small proportion of missing data (.2–7.2%) for each variable in the analysis. Little’s omnibus MCAR test revealed that these data were missing completely at random (χ² (4,259) = 4,305.37, p = .306), which permitted imputation using a fully conditional specification (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) strategy. Also, mild to moderate negative skewness was found for outcome expectations, self-efficacy, and several dimensions of the CVQ, which remained even after removal of outliers. Across the eight variables of interest, 35 univariate outliers were identified and addressed by recoding them to the nearest valid score within 3 SD from the mean. Additionally, three multivariate outliers were identified and these cases were removed from the data set prior to subsequent analyses. No violations of the assumptions of linearity or the absence of multicollinearity were evident in the data set. Zero-order correlations among the variables are displayed in Table 1, as well as the means and standard deviations for each variable.

Table 1.

Correlations Among Career Outcome Expectations, Occupational Self-Efficacy, and Calling

	COE	OSE	PTS	STS	PPW	SPW	PPO	SPO	PC
Career outcome expect (COE)	–
Occupational self-efficacy (OSE)	.35^**	–
Presence trans. summons (PTS)	.07^*	.21^**	–
Search trans. summons (STS)	−.04	.01	.32^**	–
Presence purposeful work (PPW)	.17^**	.27	.63^**	.50^**	–
Search purposeful work (SPW)	.10^*	.19^*	.52^**	.61^**	.83^**	–
Presence prosocial orient. (PPO)	.13^**	.33^**	.48^**	.35^**	.65^**	.83^**	–
Search prosocial orient. (SPO)	.13^**	.29^**	.39^**	.34^**	.60^**	.65^**	.83^**	–
Total presence of calling (PC)	.16^**	.31^**	.81^**	.45^**	.89^**	.75^**	.83^**	.71^**	–
Total search for calling (SC)	.02^*	.19^**	.47^**	.79^**	.75^**	.90^**	.70^**	.79^**	.77^**
Mean	21.65	30.52	9.86	10.54	11.16	12.14	11.88	12.65	32.92
SD	3.50	3.81	3.12	3.37	2.42	3.29	3.27	3.17	8.04

Note. *p < .05.

** p < .001.

Hypothesis 1

The first hypothesis was tested using hierarchical multiple regression, with demographic variables entered in a preliminary block to partial out their influence, and both dimensions of calling entered in simultaneously in a second block. Supporting the hypothesis that calling is a significant predictor of participants’ expectations for a successful future career outcome, this analysis revealed that calling accounted for approximately 2.5% of the variance in career outcome expectations, after controlling for the key demographic characteristics of participant sex, age, language and SES, Adjusted R ² = .024, F(2, 848) = 11.57, p < .001. Table 2 displays the unstandardized (B) and standardized (β) regression coefficients, as well as the semipartial correlations for each predictor. These coefficients reveal that the presence of a calling significantly predicts higher career outcome expectations, while the search for a calling predicted lower career outcome expectations, although this effect only approached significance.

Table 2.

Predictors of Career Outcome Expectations

Variable	B	SE B	β	t	p	Semipartial Correlation
Step 1 (adj. R ² = .002, F(4, 850) = 1.48), p > .05)
Constant	21.41	.67
SES	.10	.07	.05	1.40	.16	.05
Age	.00	.03	.00	.06	.97	.00
Sex	−.45	.26	−.06	−1.77	.08	−.06
Language	−.58	.48	−.04	−1.21	.23	−.04
Step 2 (adj. R ² = .024, F(2, 848) = 11.57, p < .001)
Constant	19.56	.89
SES	.11	.07	.06	1.58	.11	.05
Age	.00	.03	.00	.00	.99	.00
Sex	−.26	.26	−.05	−1.02	.31	−.04
Language	−.61	.48	−.04	−1.28	.20	−.04
Total Presence of Calling	.1	.02	.23	4.29	< .001	.15
Total Search for Calling	−.04	.02	−.10	−1.86	.06	−.06

Note. SES = socioeconomic status.

Hypothesis 2

The second hypothesis was addressed using Preacher and Hayes’ (2008) bootstrapping approach to mediation analysis, which involves estimation of the indirect effect of the predictor on the outcome variable using repeated sampling from the data set. Preacher and Hayes explain that one of the advantages of bootstrapping is that it does not require normally distributed data. Separate mediation analyses were conducted for the presence and search for a calling, with participant sex, age, language, and SES entered as covariates into the model to control for their influence. As shown in Table 3, the results of the mediation analyses revealed that the direct relations between the two dimensions of calling and career outcome expectations became nonsignificant. In contrast, the estimated indirect effects of calling on outcome expectations and their accompanying confidence intervals presented in Table 4 revealed small but significant results. That is, the influence of both presence of and search for calling on occupational outcome expectations appears to be fully mediated by occupational self-efficacy.

Table 3.

Direct Effects of Calling on Career Outcome Expectations

	Coefficient^a	SE	t	p
Total presence of calling – Career outcome expectations	.02	.01	1.35	> .05
Total search for calling – Career outcome expectations	.00	.01	.15	> .05
Presence of transcendent summons – Career outcome expectations	.01	.04	.29	> .05
Search for transcendent summons – Career outcome expectations	−.06	.03	−1.63	> .05
Presence of purposeful work – Career outcome expectations	.08	.04	2.34	.02
Search for Purposeful Work – Career Outcome Expectations	.03	.04	.80	> .05
Presence of prosocial orientation – Career outcome expectations	.02	.04	.59	> .05
Search for Prosocial Orientation – Career Outcome Expectations	.05	.04	1.34	> .05

Note. ^aIn the presence of occupational self-efficacy as a mediator, and the covariates of SES, sex, age, and language.

Table 4.

Indirect Effects of Calling on Career Outcome Expectations, Through Self Efficacy and Controlling for Demographic Characteristics

				95% CI
Model^a	Estimated^b Coefficient	Bias	SE	Lower	Upper
Total Presence of Calling – Career Outcome Expectations	.05	.000	.01	.03	.06
Total Search for Calling – Career Outcome Expectations	.03	.000	.01	.02	.05
Presence of Transcendent Summons – Career Outcome Expectations	.08	−.001	.02	.05	.11
Search for Transcendent Summons – Career Outcome Expectations	.000	.000	.01	−.03	.03
Presence of Purposeful Work – Career Outcome Expectations	.09	.000	.01	.06	.13
Search for Purposeful Work – Career Outcome Expectations	.07	−.000	.02	.04	.11
Presence of Prosocial Orientation – Career Outcome Expectations	.12	−.000	.02	.08	.12
Search for Prosocial Orientation – Career Outcome Expectations	.11	.000	.02	.08	.16

Note. ^aIn the presence of occupational self-efficacy as a mediator, and the covariates of SES, sex, age, and language.

^bEstimated using bias corrected and accelerated bootstrapping, with 5,000 samples.

Hypothesis 3

Although the same pattern of results was found for both aspects of calling and career outcome expectations, it is possible that some subdimension of calling relates to expectations in a different way than presence of or search for calling as a whole. To explore this possibility, additional post hoc analyses were conducted to delineate the relations between career outcome expectations, occupational self-efficacy, and each individual subscale of the CVQ. Specifically, the procedures used to test Hypothesis 2 were repeated to test the hypothesis that self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relation between each individual subscale of calling and career outcome expectations. The only subdimension of calling that emerged as having a significant direct influence on career outcome expectations was the presence of purposeful work, after accounting for the mediating effect of occupational self-efficacy and controlling for background characteristics (see Table 3). The indirect effects of calling on career outcome expectations and accompanying confidence intervals, calculated through bootstrapping, can be found in Table 4. Examination of the estimated effects and their confidence intervals reveals that, although the indirect effects of calling on career outcome expectations are small, five of the six effects are statistically significant. Together, the information on Tables 3 and 4 suggest that participants’ level of self-efficacy fully mediates the relations between career outcome expectations and presence of transcendent summons, search for purposeful work, presence of and search for a prosocial orientation, and partially mediates the relation between presence of purposeful work and career outcome expectations. Additionally, search for transcendent summons emerged as having no significant direct or indirect association with career outcome expectations in this study.

Discussion

The pattern of results that emerged from the analyses provided partial support for the hypotheses. Consistent with the first hypothesis, the multiple regression revealed that, in combination, students’ presence of and search for calling accounted for approximately 2.5% of the variance in their career outcome expectations, over and above the influence of sex, age, language, and SES. Although this relation was significant, it must also be recognized that the size of the effect is small. This is consistent with existing theory about career outcome expectations, which proposes that expectations for a successful future career outcome are influenced by a multitude of learning experiences, including previous actual experience in that area and symbolic reasoning about the probability of success (Bandura, 2001). Additionally, although there has been limited empirical research on predictors of career outcome expectations (Fouad & Guillen, 2006), aspects of identity and social support have been found to influence the development of outcome expectations related to future careers (Gushue, 2006; Gushue & Whitson, 2006). When considering the results of the present study in the context of existing literature, it can be concluded that sense of a calling is a small but real influence on undergraduate students’ expectations for a successful future career outcome. However, calling is only one among many things that may determine students’ expectations about their future careers, and the importance of calling in relation to other influences on people’s career outcome expectation has not yet been delineated. Consequently, exploring the issue of relative importance is an critical direction for future research on calling and people’s outcome expectations for the domain of work.

Results from the mediation analyses reveal a more complex relation between calling and career outcome expectations. The second hypothesis was only partially supported: the indirect relation between presence of and search for calling on expectations through self-efficacy was significant, but the direct relation became nonsignificant once the mediating effect of self-efficacy was accounted for. Therefore, it appears that calling influences career outcome expectations only in an indirect way through self-efficacy, rather than in both directly and indirectly, as would be expected from SCCT. A similar pattern of results emerged when all six subscales of calling were examined separately: For presence of transcendent summons, search for purposeful work, and both prosocial orientation dimensions, the mediation analyses yielded significant indirect effects but nonsignificant direct effects, indicating that the relations between these aspects of calling and career outcome expectations were fully mediated by students’ occupational self-efficacy. It was only for the presence of a sense of purpose and meaning in one’s career that there were significant direct and indirect (through self-efficacy) effects on career outcome expectations. That is, the influence of having a sense that one’s work is purposeful was both directly related to students’ expectations, and was partially mediated by their sense of occupational self-efficacy.

Overall, these patterns of results suggest that undergraduate students’ sense of calling influences their career outcome expectations primarily through its relation with their perceptions of efficacy, which in turn is associated with their expectations for a successful career outcome. These findings parallel the results of Duffy and colleagues’ (2011) examination of the relation between calling and academic satisfaction, where the influence of calling was also fully mediated by self-efficacy and work hope. Although two studies form an insufficient body of evidence to make definitive claims, the results of these studies combine to emphasize the importance of attending to the connection to self-efficacy, when examining how calling relates to aspects of career development in university student populations. This possibility needs to be tested through additional studies examining whether self-efficacy functions as a mediator of the relations between calling and other career-related variables.

Intriguingly, both the direct and indirect effects of search for transcendent summons on career outcome expectations were nonsignificant in the mediation analysis, despite the fact that the standardized coefficient (β) of search for transcendent summons emerged as significant in the multiple regression. The possibility that these apparently contradictory results are an artifact of the way that the different analyses were conducted cannot be discounted. Another viable interpretation is that individuals who are searching for a transcendent summons may be waiting for their calling (and accompanying career direction) to be given to then, rather than actively searching. If so, they would not have clear sense of any future occupation about which they could feel efficacious. However, it is also possible that this aspect of calling interacts in important ways with other dimensions of calling to influence career outcome expectations such that, when search for transcendent summons is examined in isolation, it may not be salient. If this is the case, it argues for the benefits of considering the various dimensions of calling together, rather than individually when seeking to understand the experience and how it relates to aspects of career development such as efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations.

Limitations

The negatively skewed distributions of several variables mean that caution needs to be taken when interpreting some of the results. Calculation of indirect effects through bootstrapping does not assume normality (Preacher & Hayes, 2008), so this limitation does not apply to the result about the mediating effect of self-efficacy. However, conclusions about whether occupational self-efficacy partially or fully mediates the relations between each dimension of calling and career outcome expectation also are dependent on the significance of the direct effect of calling in these models, and the results of those t tests may have been affected by the skewed distributions. Therefore, the present study needs to be replicated with more normally distributed samples to more firmly establish whether the mediating effects of self-efficacy are full or partial in nature.

Because the purpose of the study was to examine the relations between calling, self-efficacy, and expectations for a successful career outcome, demographic characteristics were partialled out of the analyses. Although this decision was effective in isolating the variables of interest, it created no opportunity for potential differences between different kinds of students or interactions between calling and student characteristics to emerge. Extensions of the present study may benefit from exploring whether the patterns found in this study differ for different kinds of university students (e.g., women vs. men; English-speaking vs. French-speaking participants; individuals from different socioeconomic or ethnic backgrounds).

A related limitation is that, because data collection occurred in English alone, it cannot be assumed that the results of this study generalize to French Canadian students, even though language was statistically controlled in the analyses. Separate research efforts are required to address the issue of whether the same relations between calling, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations are present in French Canadians or students from other cultures, although such efforts would also require the translation of the CVQ into those other languages.

As with all single time-point survey research, another limitation of this study is that it cannot be assumed that a causal link exists between the different dimensions of calling and self-efficacy or outcome expectations. That is, these results do not imply that interventions designed to increase postsecondary students’ sense of having purposeful work or to address their search for a transcendent summons will necessarily improve their occupational self-efficacy and expectations for a successful career outcome. Additional research is required to establish the direction of causality. Doing so would strengthen the argument for career counselors to use calling-based interventions as one way to address deficits in university students’ sense of occupational self-efficacy or career outcome expectations. The results of the present study suggest that engaging in such research to establish whether calling-based interventions can improve occupational self-efficacy and expectations for a successful career outcome is warranted, because substantive associations between calling, occupational self-efficacy, and career outcome expectations were uncovered.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Research Grant 410-2009-0973.

References

Bandura

(1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura

(2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1–26. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1

Betz

N. E.

Hackett

(2006). Career self-efficacy theory: Back to the future. Journal of Career Assessment, 14, 3–11. doi:10.1177/1069072705281347

Dik

B. J.

Duffy

R. D.

(2009). Calling and vocation at work: Definitions and prospects for research and practice. The Counseling Psychologist, 37, 424–450. doi:10.1177/0011000008316430

Dik

B. J.

Duffy

R. D.

Eldridge

B. M.

(2009). Calling and vocation in career counseling: Recommendations for promoting meaningful work. Professional Psychology, Research & Practice, 40, 625–632. doi:10.1037/a0015547

Dik

B. J.

Steger

M. F.

(2008). Randomized trial of a calling-infused career workshop incorporating counselor self-disclosure. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 203–211. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2008.04.001

Duffy

R. D.

Allan

B. A.

Dik

B. J.

(2011). The presence of a calling and academic satisfaction: Examining potential mediators. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79, 74–80. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2010.11.001

Duffy

R. D.

Dik

B. J.

Steger

M. F.

(2011). Calling and work-related outcomes: Career commitment as a mediator. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 78, 210–218. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2010.09.013

Duffy

R. D.

Sedlacek

W. E.

(2007). The presence of and search for a calling: Connections to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70, 590–601. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2007.03.007

10.

French

J. R.

Domene

J. F.

(2010). Sense of “calling”: An organizing principle for the lives and values of young women in university. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 44, 1–14. Retrieved from http://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/cjc/index.php/rcc

11.

Elangovan

A. R.

Pinder

C. C.

McLean

(2010). Callings and organizational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 428–440. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2009.10.009

12.

Elliott

K. J.

(1992). A preliminary study of people with life callings (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Union Institute, Lafayette, LA

13.

Fouad

N. A.

Guillen

(2006). Outcome expectations: Looking to the past and potential future. Journal of Career Assessment, 14, 130–142. doi:10.1177/1069072705281370

14.

Green

(2003). A heuristic study of the experience of being called that feature a mystical dimension (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Union Institute, Lafayette, LA.

15.

Gushue

G. V.

(2006). The relationship of ethnic identity, career decision-making self-efficacy and outcome expectations among Latino/a high school students. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68, 85–95. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2005.03.002

16.

Gushue

G. V.

Whitson

M. L.

(2006). The relationship among support, ethnic identity, career decision self-efficacy, and outcome expectations in African American high school students: Applying social cognitive career theory. Journal of Career Development, 33, 112–124. doi:10.1177/0894845306293416

17.

Hall

Chandler

(2005). Psychological success: When the career is a calling. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 155–176. doi:10.1002/job.301

18.

Hunter

Dik

B. J.

Banning

J. H.

(2010). College students’ perceptions of calling in work and life: A qualitative analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 178–186. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2009.10.008

19.

Lent

Brown

S. D.

Hackett

(1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 79–122. doi:10.1006/jvbe.1994.1027

20.

McWhirter

Crothers

Rasheed

(2000). The effects of high school career education on social–cognitive variables. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47, 330–341. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.47.3.330

21.

Peterson

Park

Hall

Seligman

M. P.

(2009). Zest and work. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 161–172.

22.

Ali

S. R, & Saunders, J. L.

(2009). The career aspirations of rural Appalachian high school students. Journal of Career Assessment, 17, 172–188. doi:10.1177/1069072708328897

23.

Reynolds

A. L.

Constantine

M. G.

(2007). Cultural adjustment difficulties and career development of international college students. Journal of Career Assessment, 15, 338–350. doi:10.1177/1069072707301218

24.

Rigotti

Schyns

Mohr

(2008). A short version of the occupational self-efficacy scale: Structural and construct validity across five countries. Journal of Career Assessment, 16, 238–255. doi:10.1177/1069072707305763

25.

Schyns

von Collani

(2002). A new occupational self-efficacy scale and its relation to personality constructs and organizational variables. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 11, 219–241. doi:10.1080/13594320244000148

26.

Sellers

T. S.

Thomas

Batts

Ostman

(2005). Women called: A qualitative study of Christian women dually called to motherhood and career. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 33, 198–209. Retrieved from https://wisdom.biola.edu/jpt/

27.

Steger

M. F.

Pickering

N. K.

Shin

J. Y.

Dik

B. J.

(2010). Calling in work: Secular or sacred?. Journal of Career Assessment, 18, 82–96. doi:10.1177/1069072709350905

28.

Woitowicz

L. A.

(2009). The relationship between life calling and academic motivation in post-secondary students (Master’s thesis) Trinity Western University, British Columbia, Canada.

29.

Woitowicz

L. A.

Domene

J. F.

(2011, June). The relationship between calling and career outcome expectations: Implications for career development Paper presented at the annual convention of the Canadian Psychological Association, Toronto, ON.

30.

Wrzesniewski

McCauley

Rozin

Schwartz

(1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People’s relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 21–33. doi:10.1006/jrpe.1997.2162