The Effect of Optimism Level' On Career Decision-Making Competence And Professional Results Expect

Abstract

This study has been carried out so as to identify the effect of level of optimism upon career decision-making competence and professional outcome expectancy. Career decision-making has been defined as one's choosing a profession by being aware of his own capabilities, while Professional outcome expectancy is defined as the beliefs related to the long-term outcomes of achievements attained through certain educational or career decision-making behaviors. It is considered that the students of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, which aims to raise students who will become the executive candidates of the future and professional individuals in the fields of economics, management, international relations, politics and public administration in both public and private sectors, should have positive perceptions so as to make significant effect on the future of the country. Positive psychology, which aims to discover the strengths of an individual, has started to be in the limelight in recent years. In this study too, the relationship between the level of optimism, which is one of the strong points of university students who are on the verge of a critical transition period in their lives and thus faced with several worries and problems, and their career decision-making competence and professional outcome expectancy has been analyzed. Target population of the study consists of the students currently attending the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of Ahi Evran University in 2015-16 educational year. No selection process has been carried out during the study for a special sample; instead, all the student population has been included in the study. 967 students have participated in the study. Three different scales have been used in the study in order to identify students' career decisions, their professional outcome expectancies and level of optimism. The data gathered have been analyzed with the help of a statistical package program. As a result of the statistical tests that were carried out, it was seen that most of the participants were first-grader girls and that a great majority of them had willingly chose their departments at the university. It was observed that their career decision-making competence and professional outcome expectancies were at the medium level, whereas their degree of optimism was high. Furthermore, a positive significant correlation was observed between the level of optimism and levels of career decision-making competence and professional outcome expectancy (p 0.05, r=. 309; p 0.05, r=. 369). As a result of the regression analysis that was made in order to identify the degree of optimism, which was the fundamental item of the study, on career decision-making and professional outcome expectancy, it was seen that the 9% change in career decisionmaking competence was explained through level of optimism.