Calling and Career Outcome Expectations: The Mediating Role of Self-efficacy

Links between young adults' sense of calling, career outcome expectations, and self-efficacy were examined in a sample of 855 undergraduate students from three universities in Atlantic Canada. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that participants' presence of and search for calling accounted for a small, but significant, portion of the variance in career outcome expectations. Mediation analysis, conducted separately for each subdimension of calling, revealed that self-efficacy partially mediated the relation between purposeful work and outcome expectations, and fully mediated the relation for the calling dimensions of search for purposeful work, presence of transcendent summons, and presence of a prosocial orientation. The pattern of findings suggests that the relation between sense of calling and expectations for a successful future occupational outcome is predominantly indirect, working through influencing students' occupational self-efficacy.