WITHDRAWN: The Mediating Effect of Self-Determination in the Relationship between Basic Psychological Need and Career Maturity in Early Adolescence

 

Background/Purpose: Career development is a major task for adolescents, but many adolescents experience conflicts with parents and suicidal thoughts because of career indetermination (Statistics Korea, 2014). Career maturity in early adolescence is as important as much as in middle and late adolescence, because career development takes place throughout the whole period of life (Hartung, Porfeli, & Vondracek, 2005). Self-determination is known as a significant factor to career development (Deci & Ryan, 2000), and is predicted by domains of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, according to basic psychological need theory. Especially for early adolescents, basic needs may be highly correlated with parent interpersonal relationships. However, there are few studies considering self-determination and career maturity of early adolescent using a theoretically-based approach that comprehensively examines three basic needs. The main aim of this study is to verify how autonomy, relatedness, and competence affect self-determination, and also how self-determination affects to career maturity in early adolescence.

Methods: This study used data of 7,190 elementary school students from the nationally representative Korea Education Longitudinal Study. The independent variable was basic psychological need (autonomy: parent’s autonomy support, relatedness: parent-child relationships, competence); the mediation variable was self-determination (amotivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, intrinsic motivation); the dependent variable was career maturity. First, latent profile analysis was performed to identify satisfaction level of three basic needs. Second, multiple mediation effect of five self-determinations in the association between latent profiles of basic need and career maturity was examined.

Results: Three latent profiles were derived based on adolescent’s autonomy, relatedness, and competence: high (11%), average (64%), and low (25%) satisfaction group. The levels of three needs were similar to each other within each group. The indirect effect of self-determination was significant between the latent basic need groups and career maturity (except for one model). Different level of career maturity was appeared in order of high, average, and low satisfaction group, indicating that the higher level of basic need satisfaction increases career maturity through self-determination. Comparing three latent group’s mediation model, the high/average group’s level of amotivation and external regulation were lower than those of the low group; the high/average group’s level of identified regulation and intrinsic motivation were higher than those of the low group. The more basic psychological needs are satisfied, the more self-determination is increased, given that a motivation shows lowest level and intrinsic motivation shows highest level. In the mediation model of introjected regulation, there is significant difference between high and low group, but there is no difference between average and low group.

Conclusions and Implications: When early adolescents have limited autonomy from parents, experience inappropriate relationships with parents, or feel low level of competence, their self-determination is decreased and this can lead to problems with their career maturity. Therefore, it is necessary to create parental education program that help parents account for adolescent's own career choice, build positive parent-child relationships, and provide a sense of achievement.