Work Values [TOP]
Every individual’s behaviour shows his value orientation. Values are the main and the most important principles, which the person follows or must follow in his/her life. When a person says that something is important for him/her, it has a great meaning, it describes one’s values. Values are not inborn. What values the person will hold is determined from childhood by the environment, in which the person grows. Maturing intellectually, communicating with parents, teachers, friends and other significant people, a person constantly observes their values and takes over part of them. Values programme all human activity, and determine the most important action and behaviour direction. The way a person values oneself, the other person’s behaviour, various phenomena, things, situations determines his/her accepted values. They become a certain criterion, by which an individual measures his/her and the others’ behaviour and actions.
In general, values are the ideas, beliefs, attitudes, forming a desirable person’s state or behaviour, they are followed in specific situations, on their basis, human behaviour is chosen and valued (Pruskus, 2004, 2005). Spranger (1928) and Allport (1961) traditionally discern six primary life values: theoretical (it is important to find the truth, rational, critical, empiric attitude to the environment), economic (valued what is useful, practical, rational), aesthetic (valued harmony in all spheres, beauty, form), religious (valued transcendental values, fullness), social (valued love and help for the man, humanity) and political (valued possession of power, activeness, management, leadership). Our values are strongly affected by significant people and organisations, in which we work, especially by the bosses and leaders of these organisations. Universal culture sources are various cultural products, religion and laws, and so on.
If a person does not clearly perceive his/her possessed values, it is difficult for him/her to understand, what s/he wants in life, what direction s/he has to take and what would suit him/her best. Not having one’s clear value orientation forms some possibilities and assumptions to follow the values imposed from outside. Therefore, it is very important not only to find values, but also to seek internalisation of them. Every person’s purposefulness, harmony, value depends on how values are internalised (Aramavičiūtė, 1998). So, value internalisation gets a crucial role, turning the values into an inner personality’s content, one’s life’s and activity motives, i.e. attitudes, emotions, feelings, views, beliefs, habits, character traits, world outlook, position, behaviour, activity style, and so on. Personality’s purposefulness, consistency and harmony depend on how intensively values are internalised. Therefore, really internalised is the value, which becomes an internal behaviour determinant (Bitinas, 2013).
However, not all values can be important in choosing a career. Work values have the biggest influence on choosing a career. Work values define what is important for a human being, what s/he takes into consideration making one or another career choice. Work motivation and satisfaction with work are significantly higher, if possessed values can be realised. Scientists distinguish various work values and differently classify them. D. Super originally developed work value inventory consisting of the following work values: achievement, co-workers (associates), creativity, income (economic return), independence, lifestyle (way of life), mental challenge (intellectual stimulation), prestige, security, supervision (supervisory relationships), work environment (surroundings), and variety (as cited in Greenhaus & Callanan, 2006). Nevill and Kruse (1996) present Values Scale, in which they identify 21 values related with activity: ability utilization, achievement, advancement, aesthetics, altruism, authority, autonomy, creativity, economic rewards, life-style, personal development, physical activity, prestige, risk, social interaction, social relations, variety, working conditions, cultural identity, physical prowess, and economic security. It is obvious that the mentioned scale includes both intrinsic and extrinsic values. Holland (1985) distinguishes six main hobby orientations, which reveal personality types, one’s values and life priorities. Holland’s theory states that professional hobbies is an important personality expression and these six orientations (six personality types) – realistic, investigative, artistic, enterprising, conventional, social – are related with specific personality actions and value orientation. For examination of various cultures, Hofstede (2001) uses mind programme instrument. According to the author, Mind programmes are mind structures, which determine the individual’s behaviour and world perception. Values are the main components of these mind programmes. Every person’s behaviour reveals itself through words, actions and activities, which show one’s value orientations. So, value is a general tendency to choose one, and not the other meaning, i.e. the value is open, presumed, distinctive for every individual, making influence on the behaviour type, way, goal and activity choice (Hofstede, 1980).
Briscoe and Hall (2006) defined that the rightly perceived values and professional behaviour directed the individual’s career. A person, whose professional activity is not encouraged by values and who is not able to direct professional behaviour in a proper direction, such a person is not able to set his/her priorities and to control his/her own career. A person, whose professional activity is not encouraged by values, but who directs his/her efforts to control his/her professional behaviour, such person’s career management is very often ineffective. A person, whose professional activity is encouraged by values, but who is not able to choose proper professional behaviour, such a person is not able to adapt to the raised requirements, changes, s/he is not able to successfully form his/her career. A person, whose professional activity is encouraged by values and who directs his/her efforts to control his/her professional behaviour, such a person is able not only to control his/her career, but also to continually learn and change, to adapt to changes (Briscoe, Hall, & DeMuth, 2006; Briscoe, Henagan, Burton, & Murphy, 2012). It is obvious that for those who clearly understand their values, career planning is more successful.
In Lithuania, not much research, related to students’ work value choice and successful career changes, has been carried out. Tolutienė (2014) analysed students’ attitude to professional calling and its links with values. The research that was carried out highlighted that calling and values arose one from another, existed not separately, but together, and supplemented each other and depended on personality traits. Empirical research confirmed that professional calling and value identification and realisation were closely interrelated and directly dependent upon one another, calling was determined by values. Verbylė (2012) investigated future social workers’ value cognitive level peculiarities. The research results revealed that students regarded social and humanistic and economic/work values as the most important value spheres. Ivanauskienė and Čepkauskaitė (2007) studied social workers’ professional value expression in practical activity. In their research (in which participated young people who already had chosen their profession), Liobikienė and Bukauskienė (2014) raise a problem that planning a career young people do not allot necessary attention to work values and do not relate them to profession choice.
So, one needs to understand that professions and jobs were not created only for the purpose that a person satisfied his/her values. Therefore, it is important to understand that neither of professions or jobs can realise all most important person’s values. However, various professions by their nature and content more or less can help an individual to satisfy the most important values. Therefore, the main purpose planning a career is to take into consideration one’s work values and seek that they by a greater part would match profession content. A person is satisfied with those works and activities, in which s/he has a possibility to achieve important for his/her work values. Therefore, it is obvious that most of the profession choices and career planning programmes encourage people to pay attention to one’s work values, to analyse them carefully and to take them into consideration seeking to realise oneself in professional activity. Planning one’s career is important not only to cognise one’s values, but also be able to set them in the order of priority and to think about one’s values in the activity context. Therefore, it is important that student’s chosen activity sphere, profession content would match important values for a student. The values a person holds are determined by the environment, in which a person is constantly staying. For a studying and working person, a profession becomes a value source. In this way, for the students studying at university a possibility appears not only to realise their values, but also to form their value system, to put work values in the order of priority, that is, to choose very carefully what is important for them in life and in professional career. Work value formation in the period of studies will become a successful career basis in the future. Therefore, work value acquisition and perception, their priority exposition and development at university becomes actual from the first study years. Thus, research object is first - year university students’ work value structure and their importance. Research aim is to analyse work value structure.
Method [TOP]
General Research Characteristics [TOP]
This research is grounded on mixed methodology (quantitative and qualitative). This is a limited research, not seeking to apply the outcomes that were obtained for all Lithuanian university student population. This research is focused on social and humanitarian study sphere. However, it is believed that the research would allow preparing and conducting a further study of the whole student population. This research was carried out from September to December 2014. The initial research results, especially of a descriptive character, were published earlier (Lamanauskas & Augienė, 2015a, 2015b). Also, career understanding structure analysis was carried out and its results were published (Lamanauskas & Augienė, 2015c).
Sample [TOP]
The research sample consists of the students of three Lithuanian universities: Siauliai University – SU, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences – LEU and Klaipeda University. 300 questionnaires were prepared. 265 questionnaires were collected with no missing responses. Response quota was 88%. A more exhaustive information about respondents and research instrument was presented in the article published earlier (Lamanauskas & Augienė, 2015a).
Research sample was selected applying a consecutive ‘bunch’ system method. It was considered sufficiently representative for obtaining meaningful data. Totally, 265 respondents participated in the research. According to their sex, the distribution was as follows: female students – 201 (75.8%), male students – 64 (24.2%). All respondents were first year students.
Instrument [TOP]
The authors prepared a questionnaire for this research. The questionnaire consisted of close and open questions. The respondents were asked to evaluate the statements about their career, work values and competencies, and also to evaluate the influence of the study on their future professional career. Four open questions were also included in the research instrument. The obtained descriptive results have been analysed and published earlier (Lamanauskas & Augienė, 2014). The results, defining the internal structure of values (a list of values is presented in the Appendix), are presented in the article.
The ordinal scale was applied for the answers in the instrument: agree/important, partly agree/important, do not agree/not important. A demographical part was also presented in the questionnaire (participants’ sex, their course and study programme). The questionnaire content validity was checked by two independent experts and was found sufficient.
Data Analysis [TOP]
Factor analysis was performed for establishing the structure of the questionnaire measuring twenty three values, applying the main component method and Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization. Factor analysis allows obtaining one or a few generalised variables from a few or several similar in their meaning ones. In this way, not only the number of the primary variables is decreased, but also they are distributed from variables to factors, the information is condensed, which becomes more embraced. The number of factors was established on the basis of Kaiser Criterion, i.e. those factors were analysed, which Eigenvalues were equal or bigger than one. Two methods were applied in order to evaluate whether the data set was appropriate for the factor analysis: Bartlett`s Test of Sphericity and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test whose results are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 indicates that factor analysis was appropriate for the structure of the data, because the values of the coefficients were quite high (Nasledov, 2005; Rivera & Ganaden, 2001). Bartlett’s test of Sphericity shows that the data correlation matrix was not equal to 1 and that data were correlated, therefore they were suitable for factor analysis. Kaiser, Meyer and Olkin (KMO) test proved that factor analysis suited for the data (KMO = .747).
From a methodological point of view, Cronbach alpha coefficient meaning for a well-made construct should be bigger than .6 (George & Mallery, 2003), in other author’s opinion, not less than .7 (Garson, 2012). In this case (see Table 2), Cronbach alpha coefficient meaning was bigger than .7, and Spearman-Brown stepped-up reliability coefficient (in SPPS: Cronbach's Alpha Based on Standardized Items) meaning was close to Cronbach alpha coefficient meaning, which means, that the variance of the answers to different questions is similar. If Cronbach’s α values were below the accepted limit of .69 (Leech, Barrett, & Morgan, 2005), such a situation is explained in the results section.
Factor loading not smaller than .40 for each variable was applied, in order to be included the variable, taking into account the recommendations (Ferguson & Cox, 1993). Seeking deeper analysis of the data, statistic rank scale rates were transferred (the position “Important” was given 1 point, “Partially important” – 0.5 point, and “Not important” – 0 point), and the index of significance (SI) which could vary from 1 (“important”) to 0 (“not important”) was calculated for each value. Also, according to a concrete factor forming value significance indexes, each factor’s significance was calculated, seeking to compare the expected differences according to sex variable.
To define difference between variables, Independent Samples Test – t-test for Equality of Means was applied. For data analysis statistical software package SPSS was applied.
Results [TOP]
Factor analysis was performed for all twenty three values in the questionnaire. The factors were extracted based on real values (Eigen Value Statistics). Six factors were extracted, which accounted for 53.60% of common variance.
In the Figure 1, the best expressed were the first six components. The real values of the other components consequently were decreasing (close to 1 or smaller).
In Table 3 initial variable communalities are presented, i.e. initial variable variation parts, which were explained by common factors. One can reasonably assert that in the selected main components sufficiently enough information remained about variables, because their communalities were not smaller than .20.
Table 3
Values | Initial | Extraction |
---|---|---|
1 | 1.000 | .458 |
2 | 1.000 | .655 |
3 | 1.000 | .650 |
4 | 1.000 | .465 |
5 | 1.000 | .455 |
6 | 1.000 | .593 |
7 | 1.000 | .530 |
8 | 1.000 | .594 |
9 | 1.000 | .478 |
10 | 1.000 | .532 |
11 | 1.000 | .611 |
12 | 1.000 | .520 |
13 | 1.000 | .413 |
14 | 1.000 | .480 |
15 | 1.000 | .547 |
16 | 1.000 | .457 |
17 | 1.000 | .456 |
18 | 1.000 | .575 |
19 | 1.000 | .680 |
20 | 1.000 | .726 |
21 | 1.000 | .522 |
22 | 1.000 | .513 |
23 | 1.000 | .419 |
Note. Extraction method: Principal component analysis.
Table 4 presents variance of the extracted 6 components. So, in Table 4 one can see that six main components (factors), which Eigenvalues were bigger than 1, explained 53.60% of common variance. It is obvious that the first 3 factors explained the biggest part of common variance (10.72%, 10.62%, and 10.15%).
Table 4
Component | Initial Eigenvalues
|
Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings
|
Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
|
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Total | % of Variance | Cumulative % | Total | % of Variance | Cumulative % | Total | % of Variance | Cumulative % | |
1 | 4.294 | 18.669 | 18.669 | 4.294 | 18.669 | 18.669 | 2.467 | 10.728 | 10.728 |
2 | 2.528 | 10.990 | 29.659 | 2.528 | 10.990 | 29.659 | 2.444 | 10.625 | 21.353 |
3 | 1.620 | 7.044 | 36.703 | 1.620 | 7.044 | 36.703 | 2.335 | 10.153 | 31.506 |
4 | 1.488 | 6.471 | 43.174 | 1.488 | 6.471 | 43.174 | 2.102 | 9.141 | 40.647 |
5 | 1.303 | 5.667 | 48.841 | 1.303 | 5.667 | 48.841 | 1.512 | 6.572 | 47.219 |
6 | 1.095 | 4.761 | 53.603 | 1.095 | 4.761 | 53.603 | 1.468 | 6.383 | 53.603 |
Note. Extraction method: Principal component analysis.
In Table 5, six extracted factor loadings are presented after the rotation procedure, also, factor significance indexes are calculated, it is shown how values are distributed into factors. Also, each factor conditional names and the values forming it are presented.
Students’ pointed out work values allowed to form six factors. Having evaluated factor significance indexes, one can see how strongly expressed is each concrete factor. The most significant factor was Responsible activity values (SI = 0.90). This factor consisted of three work values: truthfulness, conscientiousness, dutifulness. The fact that this factor is the most significant shows first year students’ forming a deep understanding of these values and the demand to realise them in their career. For social and humanitarian sphere activity (in which prevail person – person professions) very important are truthfulness, conscientiousness, dutifulness values. Therefore, one can favourably value that these values are very important for the students having chosen to study social and humanitarian studies, who will realise their professional career in this activity sphere in future.
Table 5
Factor, Value No. | Value | Factor loadings | SI | SD | Cronbach's Alpha |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
FACTOR 1: Responsible activity values | 0.90 | 0.17 | .75 | ||
20 | Truthfulness | .82 | |||
19 | Conscientiousness | .77 | |||
21 | Dutifulness | .67 | |||
FACTOR 2: Social status values | 0.64 | 0.20 | .68 | ||
8 | Prestige activity | .71 | |||
22 | Social prestige | .67 | |||
15 | Status | .65 | |||
13 | Achievements | .53 | |||
3 | High position | .41 | |||
FACTOR 3: Active work values | 0.82 | 0.16 | .68 | ||
6 | Creativity | .67 | |||
9 | Work as a calling | .56 | |||
10 | Self-realisation at work | .55 | |||
7 | Communication with colleagues | .54 | |||
5 | Responsibility | .54 | |||
4 | Interesting activity | .53 | |||
FACTOR 4: Harmony values | 0.79 | 0.18 | .60 | ||
11 | Work and free-time harmony | .75 | |||
12 | Work and family harmony | .66 | |||
17 | Safety | .49 | |||
23 | Physical and social environment | .41 | |||
FACTOR 5: Reward values | 0.75 | 0.19 | .49 | ||
2 | Good job salary | .79 | |||
3 | High position | .50 | |||
14 | Comfort | .46 | |||
FACTOR 6: Activity style values | 0.71 | 0.16 | .16a | ||
18 | Autonomy | .71 | |||
16 | Altruism | .60 | |||
1 | Evaluation of efforts | -.51 |
Note. Extraction method: Principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization. Rotation converged in 17 iterations. SI = significance index; SD = standard deviation.
aDue to the low internal consistency coefficient, this factor is not analysed further.
The second, according to its importance, was the third factor Active work values (SI = 0.82). This factor consisted of six work values: creativity, work as a calling, self-realisation at work, communication with colleagues, responsibility, and interesting activity. These values show that in professional career students value activeness, perceive career as an active process and understand that only actively working they can successfully realise their career. High evaluation of active work value showed modern attitude to career, in which all responsibility for the successful career realisation fell on the person himself.
The third, according to its importance, was the fourth factor Harmony values (SI = 0.79). This factor consisted of the following work values: work and free time harmony, work and family harmony, safety, physical and social environment. These, highly valued values demonstrate students’ understanding that is important to match various life and activity spheres, all of them are important and complement one another seeking to successfully realise oneself in career and life.
The fourth, according to its importance, was the fifth factor Reward values (SI = 0.75). Reward value factor internal consistency was rather low (.49) comparing it with other factors, however the significance of this factor was high, and this, anyway, indicates that this feature is typical of students. This factor comprised the following work values: good job salary, high position, comfort. These less valued work values were not the most important for the students realising their professional goals. Social and humanitarian sphere professional activities are not well-paid. One needs to think that students conscientiously evaluated this, choosing this activity sphere. Otherwise, they would have not chosen this sphere activity or we would have received contradictory results (i.e. in this case, one can think that reward values would have occupied a significantly higher position among other values) that would have revealed professional activity choice and value incongruity.
The fifth according to importance was the sixth factor Activity style values (SI = 0.71). Despite the fact that significance index was rather high, internal consistency was very low, therefore this factor is not analysed further.
The least significant for students was the second factor Social status values (SI = 0.64). This factor comprised the following work values: prestige activity, social prestige, status, achievements, high position. Social and humanitarian sphere activities are not considered a prestige in society, and do not guarantee high social status, good payment. It is obvious that students, choosing to study social and humanitarian studies, realise their values, however, social status values were not the most important for them. An assumption can be made that the first year students’ work values correspond to social and humanitarian sphere activity content and context, and form an opportunity to consolidate these values during the studies.
Gender differences in factor significance indexes are presented in Table 6. A statistically significant difference was obtained in terms of sex on the first, the third, and the fourth factors (Table 6). The null hypothesis H0 about equal averages was rejected at the level of significance for these factors.
Table 6
Factor | Sex
|
Total
|
t-test for equality of means (indexes)
|
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Female
|
Male
|
|||||||
SI | SD | SI | SD | SI | SD | t(263) | p | |
Factor 1 | 0.93 | 0.13 | 0.80 | 0.24 | 0.90 | 0.17 | 5.05 | <.001 |
Factor 2 | 0.63 | 0.19 | 0.64 | 0.22 | 0.64 | 0.20 | -0.18 | .857 |
Factor 3 | 0.84 | 0.14 | 0.76 | 0.19 | 0.82 | 0.16 | 3.84 | <.001 |
Factor 4 | 0.81 | 0.17 | 0.73 | 0.20 | 0.79 | 0.18 | 3.18 | .002 |
Factor 5 | 0.76 | 0.17 | 0.75 | 0.23 | 0.75 | 0.19 | 0.33 | .742 |
Note. Factor 6 was removed from the analysis.
In Table 6, one can see that the first factor, the third factor, and the fourth factor were statistically more significant for female students than for male. One can make a hypothetical assumption that female personality type better than the male one matches the chosen professional environment, i.e. females more successfully have chosen social direction profession and feel a big demand to realise themselves in a chosen professional (pedagogue) activity. In the social sphere (pedagogue activity), the favourable conditions for its realisation could be responsible activity, active work, harmony values. Therefore, one can think that, because of this reason, females demonstrate bigger activeness and satisfaction in a chosen activity sphere, because proper profession choice forms better possibilities for them to realise important professional values. One can discern that in the female case, there are more expressed values and a chosen profession harmony.
No significant differences were noticed on factors two and five. In all cases ps > .05.
Discussion [TOP]
The aim of the research was to reveal first year university students’ work value structure. It is known that various factors determine professional choice and further career, as, for example, interests, abilities, personality traits and so on. Also, a very important factor consists of values - especially work (activity) values. Students’ chosen future profession is closely related to personality value system, this is a basis, referring to which a person creates his/her life. Professional pre-service teacher identity development in the study process is inevitably important. In this respect, work values have to be properly internalized and applied in practical activity. On the whole, understanding value structure is important, because, as Stanišauskienė (2015) notices, Y generation representatives stepping into labour market possess different values and behaviour. In their research (in which participated young people already having chosen the profession) Liobikienė and Bukauskienė (2014) raise a problem that planning their career young people do not devote proper attention to their values and do not relate them to their profession choice. Young people relate profession calling to their values. Profession calling reveals itself as profession prestige defence and thorough (qualitative) work. However, in this case, when profession choice is related to economic type values, doubts and considerations arise about a change of profession. Young people, who are able to match personal values with their profession, i.e. realise personal values in the professional activity, they live a happy, meaningful and full value life. In this case, when a professional activity is grounded on pragmatic attitude, it becomes only “people subsistence“, but not a full value life source.
On the other hand, work values influence satisfaction both with work, and career in general (Kuchinke, Kang, & Oh, 2008). Various research carried out in other countries showed that younger generations were more individualistic and preferred intrinsic work values such as work autonomy, work identity, challenging jobs, and self-expression (Lee, Mui Hung, & Cheng Ling, 2012). The research carried out by these authors in Malaysia also showed that there were no significant differences between work values chosen by male and female of Gen Y pre-service teachers. This contradicts to the results, which were obtained in Lithuania during the carried out research. In other countries similar research in one way or another showed existing differences, according to the sex factor, e.g., in Turkey (Topkaya & Uztosun, 2012), Izrael (Shapira-Lischshinsky, 2009), Singapore (Aryee, 1994), China (Nie, 2012), Bulgaria (Bayrakova, 2015) and other. Basically, one can think that gender is a determinant of work values among university students (Abu-saad & Isralowitz, 1997; Haslett & Leidel, 2015).
The carried out research showed that the first year students considered work values as the most important in their professional activity, which showed social truthfulness and illustrated successful professional activity. Work values, illustrating stability in a professional career, are highly valued. For students, having chosen to study social, humanitarian, artistic, pedagogy sciences, work values expressing high social status were not important and the latter importance in the professional career may be lower valued. Work value importance for successful career management evaluation, according to the gender, revealed that females, more than males, considered as important the values, which expressed a safe, but dynamic career ambition. Some other studies basically confirm this. For example, the research carried out in the Philippines shows that pre-service teachers regard teaching as an important profession, also the respondents do not expect good working conditions and convenience in the profession (Torres & Ballado, 2014).
The research revealed only a certain work (activity) value structure. However, it is obvious that more exhaustive research is necessary, revealing possible relationships and regularities depending on various demographic, social, economic and other variables. But, in any case, a focus on work values in career education may be useful for many incoming first-year university students.
Conclusions [TOP]
Work value structure of the first-year students, studying in social and humanitarian science programmes, can be defined by 5 main factors: responsible activity values, active work values, harmony values, reward values, social status values.
The most significant factor was Responsible activity values. This factor consisted of three work values: truthfulness, conscientiousness, dutifulness. These work values were the most important for students, realising their professional activity and seeking successful career.
The second, according to its importance, was the third factor Active work values. This factor consisted of six work values: creativity, work as a calling, self-realisation at work, collaboration with colleagues, responsibility, and interesting activity. These values illustrated that students valued active position in professional career highly.
The fourth factor Harmony values occupied a little lower position. This factor consisted of the following work values: work and free time harmony, work and family harmony, safety, physical and social environment. These work values demonstrated students’ professional activity and other life sphere harmony demand.
Reward values (good job salary, high position, comfort) received lower evaluations. The lowest evaluated values were social status values (prestige activity, social prestige, status, achievements, high position).
The main differences were ascertained between female and male work value structure. Responsible activity values, active work values and harmony values were more important for female students than for male.