Assessing Calling in Chinese College Students: Development of a Measure and Its Relation to Hope

Research suggests that perceiving a calling towards a particular career is relatively frequent among college students in Western cultures. However, little is known about how this applies to other cultural contexts. This study assessed the perception of career as a calling in the Chinese culture. Study 1 reports the development of the Chinese Calling Scale (CCS), based on a sample of 788 Chinese college students, and identifies three dimensions of a calling: Altruism, Guiding Force, and Meaning and Purpose. Measurement invariance across gender is supported by the CCS. In Study 2, the convergent and criterion validity of the CSS is examined based on a sample of 387 college students. The CCS is strongly related to an existing calling measure and moderately related to life meaning and life satisfaction. Study 3 examines the relation between calling, hope, life meaning, life satisfaction, and career decidedness among 518 college students. The findings reveal that hope significantly mediated the relation of calling with career decidedness, life meaning, and life satisfaction. In summary, this study provides a new scale to assess calling in Chinese culture and is the first to explore how calling relates to dispositional hope. In vocational psychology, the study of calling has flourished since 2007 (Duffy & Dik, 2013). Since then, researchers have established that a considerable number of college students and working adults report a calling towards a particular career and have found consistent evidence that calling relates to several positive life outcomes (e.g., life satisfaction, meaning in life, career maturity; see Duffy & Dik, 2013 for a review). Studies have defined calling in several ways and clearly revealed that the prevalent conceptualization of calling in the scientific literature is rooted in the Western cultural background (Dik & Duffy, 2009). Indeed, Zhang, Dik, Wei, and Zhang (2014) found that the understanding of calling in Chinese college students showed several differences compared with the definition in Western samples. However, overall, the study of calling in non-Western samples is sparse to date (Duffy & Dik, 2013), especially in Asian populations. Of particular concern is how to assess calling and explore its effects in non-Western samples. Thus, the first aim of the current study was to develop a suitable scale for use in assessing calling in Chinese samples and to test the reliability and validity of this newly developed scale. Second, we wanted to explore whether dispositional hope acts as a mediator in the link between calling and life meaning, life satisfaction, and career decidedness. Hope, defined as cognitions regarding one’s expectations and ability to achieve goals (Snyder, 2002), is increasingly considered an important psychological resource for career development (Hirschi, 2014). However, while some research has explored why calling is linked to positive outcomes, such as career decidedness or life satisfaction, hope has not yet been considered an important factor in this regard. In summary, our study makes several contributions to the literature. First, we provide a new, short, reliable, and valid measure to assess calling among Chinese college students. Second, we provide new knowledge about the dimensionality and prevalence of callings among Chinese samples. Third, we enrich the scientific understanding of how calling is related to important career and well-being variables in the Chinese culture. Fourth, we provide initial support for the notion that calling is significantly related to greater hope. Definition and Measurement of Calling Attempts to measure the perception of calling must begin with a clearly articulated definition, as is the case with any construct. In Western culture, some definitions of calling are based on strong religious roots, such as Dalton’s (2001) definition of calling as a means of serving God or following God’s summons to a certain career. The relation between a sense of calling and religiousness has only recently become a focus of study (e.g., Dik, Duffy & Tix, 2012; Steger, Pickering, Shin & Dik, 2010), but many scholars have noted that calling has become an CHINESE CALLING SCALE 3 increasingly secularized concept. For example, Hall and Chandler (2005) defined calling as a purpose of one’s life, and Dobrow and TostiKharas (2011) defined calling as a consuming, meaningful passion that people experience toward a life domain. Dik and Duffy (2009) proposed a definition that considered calling’s historic roots while offering a secular, multidimensional approach. Specifically, they defined calling as “a transcendent summons, experienced as originating beyond the self, to approach a particular life role in a manner oriented toward demonstrating or deriving a sense of purpose or meaningfulness and that holds other-oriented values and goals as primary sources of motivation” (Dik & Duffy, 2009, p. 427). Dimensions similar to these were found in a qualitative study of college students by Hunter, Dik, and Banning (2010), while in another conceptual essay, Elangovan, Pinder and McLean (2010) also identified three facets: action orientation, sense of purpose, and pro-social intention. More recently, using a qualitative study, Hagmaier and Abele (2012) identified a five-category conceptualization of calling in a German adult sample: (a) identification with one's work, (b) sense and meaning, (c) personenvironment fit, (d) value-driven behavior, and (e) transcendent guiding force. However, only three dimensions were confirmed in their subsequent quantitative analysis. Several measurement instruments have been developed that correspond with these diverse conceptualizations of calling. Although the recent development of rigorous measures represents an improvement over early research on calling, which lacked multidimensional measures with strong psychometric support, the accumulating diversity of scales creates its own challenges. To date, at least five measures have been developed for assessing the experience of calling. The first was the unidimensional scale developed by Dobrow and Tosti-Kharas (2011), which consisted of 12 items based on a definition of calling as a consuming, meaningful passion people experience toward a domain. The second was the multidimensional Calling and Vocation Questionnaire (CVQ; Dik, Eldridge, Steger, & Duffy, 2012), a scale that assesses three dimensions of calling: transcendent summons, purposeful work, and a prosocial orientation. The third was the Brief Calling Scale (BCS; Dik et al., 2012), which includes four items to assess the presence of and search for a calling. The fourth was Hagmaier and Abele’s (2012) multidimensional calling measure (MCM), which uses nine items to assess three dimensions: identification and person-environment fit, transcendent guiding force, and sense and meaning/value-driven behavior. The fifth was the Career Calling Scale (Praskova, Creed, & Hood, 2014), which uses 15 items to assess three dimensions: other-oriented meaning, personal meaning, and active engagement. However, these measures were all derived from definitions of calling as understood in Western culture. Understanding Calling in Chinese Culture Calling, which can be generally translated as “Shiming” in Mandarin, is a sacred word in Chinese culture, while calling in the career domain tends to be more secular (Zhang, Wei, & Zhang, 2012; Zhang et al., 2014). In traditional Chinese culture, pursuing a calling emphasizes fulfilling a mission or expectation from a higher power, such as family, a superior authority, or a transcendent power (Zhang et al., 2014). Considering these traditional roots, Zhang et al. (2014) conducted a qualitative study to explore how Chinese college students interpret the meaning of having a calling. They identified four dimensions: (a) guiding force, a guiding influence to develop one’s career (e.g., duty, mission, destiny, or a “should-do” feeling); (b) meaning and purpose, describing the connection of a calling with a broader sense of meaning in life; (c) altruism, a motivation to make a difference to others or society via one’s career; and (d) active tendency, reflecting effortful and active behavior related to one’s calling. In general, these dimensions showed several similarities to the findings obtained from Western samples. However, there were also some differences. In particular, there is less of an emphasis on religion and spirituality and a greater emphasis on a sense of duty and family expectation in China. In an empirical study, Zhang, Wei, Zhang, and Li (2013) found that college students pursuing a degree in teaching who have a greater sense of calling to be a teacher experienced a higher life meaning, academic satisfaction, and life satisfaction. Their study used the unidimensional domain calling scale developed by Dobrow and Tosti-Kharas (2011). However, as outlined above, there are some aspects of what is considered a calling in the Chinese culture that may not be reflected in CHINESE CALLING SCALE 4 Western calling scales. In the current study, we address the lack of a specific scale to assess this construct in the Chinese culture by developing a calling scale that is suitable for this culture and providing evidence of its reliability and validity. Hope as a Mediator between Calling and Related Outcomes According to the definition by Snyder (2002), hope includes two core components: (a) agency thinking (i.e., the cognitions that convey one’s capacity to reach one’s goals) and (b) pathways thinking (i.e., the plans and strategies to meet one’s goals). Previous studies have established that calling is related to life satisfaction, life meaning, career planning, and career decidedness (e.g., Duffy & Sedlacek, 2007, 2010; Hirschi & Herrmann, 2013). In the present study, we propose that these relations are mediated by hope. A calling should activate hope because a calling provides a positively specified goal and b