Examining Search for and Presence of a Calling Among Students and Employed Adults Using Latent Profile Analysis

The concept of calling is relevant to many people’s working lives. Most extant research examines perceiving and living a calling, but search for a calling is comparatively understudied. We addressed this by examining profiles of searching for and presence of a calling using latent profile analysis (LPA) across student and employed adult samples. We conducted two studies (N = 1,251). Study 1 recruited participants from a U.S. university, and Study 2 drew a subsample of employed adults from the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study. Profiles were compared across criterion variables including living a calling, academic/job satisfaction, purpose/meaning in life, hope, and faith at work. Among each sample, four profiles emerged: unresolved searchers (low presence, high search), called satisficers (high presence, low search), called explorers (high presence, high search), and unconcerned with calling (low presence, low search). For students, called explorers showed greater work-related and overall well-being. For employed adults, called satisficers appeared most favorable. This research revealed arrangements of how people engage with their sense of calling and identified how the nature of seeking a calling and its associations may differ between students and employed adults.