Family Influence on Korean Students’ Career Decisions: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Family influence is a key factor in career development and considerably more so in some cultures than others. Assessing the extent to which family plays a role in college students’ career development within collectivistic cultures may thus significantly contribute to the extant literature by offering varying perspectives on the relationships between familial influence, career preparation satisfaction, and life satisfaction. The present study examined the cultural validity of the Family Influence Scale (FIS) through a sample of 420 South Korean college students. The FIS was then used in a test of family influence as the main distal contextual factor in the Social Cognitive Career Theory—Life Satisfaction Model. Overall, results supported the cultural validity of FIS and also the hypothesized model. Family informational support, family expectations, family financial support, career decision-making self-efficacy, expectancy of outcome, career preparation behavior, and career preparation satisfaction were each found to significantly relate to life satisfaction, accounting for 57% of the variance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.