The Factors that Move College Students from Job Indecision to Job Decision for Improving their Psychological Well-being

Resumen

 This study aimed to explore the individual, familial, and educational factors influencing the transition process of undecided college students into making job decisions and to provide suggestions for college career educational activities. To achieve the research objectives, binary logistic regression analysis was conducted using data from the 6th year of the Korea Education Employment Panel (KEEP II) survey conducted in 2022. The research findings are as follows. First, among college students who were undecided about their job one year prior, 65.1% remained undecided, while 34.9% of college students were found to have made job decisions one year later. Second, it was found that there were more students in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering disciplines remained undecided, while more students in the education and medical fields made new decisions; the natural sciences and arts fields showed proportions similar to the overall rate. Students who exhibited higher levels of selfdetermination and satisfaction in family life, university performance, major satisfaction, and overall university satisfaction were significantly more likely to be in the new decision group than the undecided group. Furthermore, it was found that students who had experience with job preparation courses, career counseling with department professors, career/employment mentoring, utilization of career development websites, corporate/recruitment information, job preparation programs, and field internship programs were more likely to be in the new decision group compared to students who had not experienced such opportunities. Third, regarding major disciplines, there was no difference in the probability of belonging to the undecided or new decision groups among humanities, engineering, natural sciences, and arts disciplines. In contrast, social sciences, education, and medical disciplines had a higher probability of belonging to the new decision group than humanities disciplines. Higher satisfaction levels in family life, and major were associated with an increased probability of belonging to the new decision group. Students who took career exploration courses were more likely to belong to the undecided group. In contrast, those taking job preparation courses were likelier to belong to the new decision group. Utilization of career development websites and participation in field internship programs increased the probability of belonging to the new decision group in job choices. Based on these research findings, it is proposed to concretize career educational activities at the departmental level within universities, guide the utilization of job preparation courses and career development websites, and participate in field internship programs as part of a long-term roadmap.