College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Coping With the Psychological Challenges of Unemployment: Testing a Social Cognitive Model(2022) Wang, Ruogu Jason; Lent, Robert W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Increasingly, involuntary job loss is being seen as a normative career process, though one with significant effects on mental health and well-being. Coping with unemployment has most often been looked at through the lens of job search coping and re-employment outcomes, with fewer studies focused on coping with the psychological challenges of unemployment. This study adapts the social cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013) to examine social cognitive predictors of well-being and psychological distress during unemployment. The psychometric properties of a revised coping behaviors measure and a new coping self-efficacy measure were examined with an initial sample of 196 unemployed respondents, yielding a 2-factor coping behaviors scale and a 1-factor psychological coping self-efficacy scale. The factor structures of these measures were confirmed in a second sample of unemployed respondents (n = 406) and, along with measures of proactive personality, financial strain, and social support, used to test the social cognitive coping model. The model offered good fit to the data and accounted for a substantial amount of the variance in well-being and psychological distress. Support was also found for most of the hypothesized paths. The study’s implications for practice and future research on coping with unemployment are discussed.Item Predicting Study Abroad Interests and Choice Goals Through Social Cognitive Career Theory(2020) Wang, Ruogu Jason; Lent, Robert W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Studying abroad in college is an educational choice that has significant implications for students’ personal, academic, and career development. Applying the Social Cognitive Career Theory interests and choice models (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), this study examined social cognitive predictors of study abroad interest and intent. First, the psychometric properties of new and revised domain-specific social cognitive variables were assessed with an initial sample of students (N = 325) from a Mid-Atlantic university, yielding 8 factors and adequate factor-derived psychometrics. This was followed by measurement model testing on a second, nationwide sample of students (N = 277), which showed that the overall model fit indices offered good fit to the data. Regressions on the second sample produced support for most of the SCCT paths predicting study abroad interests and study abroad intent. Finally, practice-based implications and directions for future research are discussed.