The Impact of Perceived English Language Proficiency & Socio - Demographic Factors on Career Decision Self – Efficacy: An Exploratory Study among Graduate Trainees

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceived proficiency level of English language from the undergraduates’ viewpoint and to examine the socio-demographic factors of the undergraduates. The general objective of this study is to investigate the impact of perceived English language proficiency on career decision self-efficacy among graduate trainees in Sri Lanka. The researcher adopted quantitative approach as the research methodology. The quantitative approach was used in order to test hypotheses and to achieve main objectives. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The convenience sampling technique was applied to select the sample, and the final sample consisted of 245 graduate trainees from three universities in Sri Lanka. The data were analyzed using Excel and SPSS employing the correlation, chisquare and regression. Based on a result from Pearson correlation analysis, it showed that there is a perfect positive relationship between perceived language proficiency and socio-demographic factors on career decision self-efficacy. As the significant value (0.000) is smaller than the desired level of significance (0.05) at 95% confidential level, the found correlation coefficient (0.849) is statistically significant. Thus, there is statistical evidence to claim that there is a significant positive relationship between learner beliefs about English language learning and career decision self-efficacy. The current study used simple regression to examine the impact of perceived English language proficiency and career decision self-efficacy among graduate trainees. The regression model was statistically significant. When “perceived English language proficiency” score increases by one unit, the odds of career decision self-efficacy increases by 0.849 times, and when the demographic factors score increases by one unit, the odds of level of career decision self-efficacy increases by 0.700. According to the result of simple regression analysis between perceived English language proficiency and career decision self-efficacy test, the hypothesis is accepted, and the relationship is also positive.