Acculturation and career development of international and domestic college students

The authors examined the relationships between career and cultural characteristics among 53 international and 54 domestic students at a large university in the southeastern United States. One-way multivariate analysis of variance results showed an overall significant difference between groups for mainstream acculturation, but not for vocational identity, dysfunctional career thoughts, goal instability, or heritage acculturation. Regression results indicated that 71% of the variance in vocational identity of domestic college students was explained by dysfunctional career thoughts and acculturation, whereas dysfunctional career thoughts were the only significant predictor of vocational identity for international college students. Thus, a key implication from this study is for career practitioners to address and challenge the dysfunctional thinking of all students to improve their vocational identity. Future researchers should also explore how other potential moderator variables (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity, parental education) may influence vocational identity, as well as include more qualitative approaches to better understand an individual’s worldview, including career and cultural characteristics.