Path Models of Vocational Calling in Christian College Students

Abstract

In the Christian college environment, students are encouraged to understand their vocational calling, yet quantitative research on how college students conceptualize calling is sparse. This correlational study extends the research literature significantly by empirically examining variables that affect sense of vocational calling in 270 college students as they near graduation. Relationships among demographic variables (gender, race, resident status, GPA, and hours worked), personal characteristics (hope, career-decision self-efficacy, strengths self-efficacy, and spirituality), and student involvement variables (campus involvement, service activities, engaged learning, and psychological sense of community) were explored to assess how these variables directly and indirectly contributed to students’ sense of vocational calling. Dobrow's (2006) theory of integrated calling provided the operational definition of calling. Through structural equation modeling (SEM) (Arbuckle, 2008), models were generated indicating that men and women conceptualized calling in distinctive ways. Although both genders perceived vocational calling from spiritual and purposeful perspectives, men interpreted calling pragmatically and cognitively, while women discerned calling from an affective perspective connected to their sense of self-esteem. There were also gender differences in predictors of vocational calling. The structural path for men was through career decision self-efficacy (β = .54; p < .001) and involvement in service activities (β = .29; p < .05), accounting for 41% of the variance in vocational calling. For women, the path was through hope (β = 47; p < .001) and engaged learning (β = .34; p < .001), and accounted for 45% of the variance in vocational calling.