Weiqiao Fan

Personality Traits, Vocational Interests, and Career Exploration: A Cross-cultural Comparison Between American and Hong Kong Students

This study compared the pattern of relationships among personality, vocational interests, and career exploration within an integrated framework between 369 American and 392 Hong Kong university students. The first hypothesis predicted differential contributions of the universal and indigenous personality dimensions based on the Cross-cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory-2 (CPAI-2) to career exploration of the American and Hong Kong students. The second hypothesis predicted that vocational interests mediated the association between personality and career exploration of the students. Cultural differences were found between the personality predictors for Hong Kong and American students, supporting the first hypothesis. The CPAI-2 indigenous personality dimensions derived in the Chinese cultural context predicted career exploration of Hong Kong students only. The second hypothesis was partially supported: Enterprise interest type mediated the association between Social Potency and career exploration in the Hong Kong sample; Artistic interest type was the mediator in the American sample. The contributions of personality and vocational interests to students’ career exploration, and the implications to cross-cultural career counseling were discussed.

The CPAI-2 as a culturally relevant personality measure in differentiating among academic major groups

We examined whether the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory-2 (CPAI-2), developed by the combined emic–etic approach, could provide useful information for us to understand the relations between personality and the key academic major groups in the Chinese context. Participants in this study included 989 university students from 9 universities in Hong Kong. Discriminant analysis showed that the personality traits measured by the CPAI-2 could significantly differentiate among six academic major groups, confirming the utility of personality variables as predictors of career-relevant choice in non-Western cultures. Among the 28 CPAI-2 personality scales, 7 significantly differentiated the 6 major groups in our multivariate analysis of variance. Two of these scales reflect universal intellectual styles while the other five were relational in natural. Among these five relationship-oriented scales, Extraversion versus Introversion and Leadership correspond to similar etic constructs in Western measures while the other three (i.e., Renqing, Social Sensitivity, and Face) are emic constructs. The information provided by these emic constructs can assist career counselors to be more sensitive to the cultural context of career choice of Chinese young people.

Reciprocal Associations Between Career Self-Efficacy and Vocational Identity: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

We examined the changes in career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) and vocational identity (VI) and their reciprocal associations among 1,026 senior high school students, comprising 493 from Hong Kong (age in 10th grade: M = 16.31, SD = 0.65; 238 girls) and 533 from Shanghai (age in 10th grade: M = 16.50, SD = 0.56; 237 girls). They completed measures for assessing their CDSE and VI annually from 10th to 12th grades. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that both CDSE and VI significantly increased over time in the Hong Kong sample. Cross-lagged path analyses indicated that the reciprocal positive effects between CDSE and VI over time were supported in both samples. These findings indicated that CDSE and VI are generally dynamic and interrelated dimensions for Chinese adolescents’ career development with some regional differences.