Survey links motivation to parental control, career confidence and job anxiety

A questionnaire study of 509 third-year undergraduates approaching graduation in China found that parental psychological control and confidence in making career decisions were associated with employment anxiety, but in opposite directions. Students reporting greater psychological control from their parents also reported more anxiety about future employment, whereas those with higher career decision-making self-efficacy reported less anxiety. Structural equation modeling indicated that both associations operated partly through two forms of motivational regulation: external regulation, in which behavior is driven by rewards, pressures or evaluations, and identified regulation, in which people endorse a goal because they regard it as personally meaningful. Because the study was cross-sectional, these results describe statistical relationships rather than proving that family behavior, confidence or motivation causes later anxiety.

The analysis modeled parental psychological control and career decision-making self-efficacy as parallel predictors rather than treating them as steps in a single causal chain. Parental control was considered a relatively distant developmental influence, while self-efficacy represented a more immediate psychological resource. In the final regression model, the two variables together explained 22.5% of the variance in employment anxiety. Parental control retained a positive standardized association with anxiety, whereas self-efficacy retained a negative association, even after both were entered alongside gender and academic major. The magnitude of these relationships was modest rather than universal: the data explain a meaningful share of variation, but most variation in reported anxiety remained unaccounted for.

All participants were junior students at one Chinese university who were about to enter the graduation job-hunting season. The researchers distributed 885 online questionnaires through the Wenjuanxing platform, removed incomplete or careless responses and excluded statistical outliers, leaving 509 valid cases, an effective response rate of 57.51%. The sample comprised 199 men, or 39.1%, and 310 women, or 60.9%, and included students in science and engineering, humanities and social sciences, and medicine. Female students reported higher employment anxiety and lower career decision-making self-efficacy than male students in bivariate tests. There were no significant gender differences in parental psychological control or either measure of motivational regulation.

Participants completed Chinese versions of the Future Employment Anxiety Scale, the Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale, the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale and the Parental Psychological Control Scale. After item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the researchers used 13 items for employment anxiety, six for parental control, 22 for career self-efficacy and three each for external and identified regulation. All items used a five-point agreement scale, with higher scores indicating more of the measured construct. The instruments were translated and, in some cases, contextually adapted for Chinese students, but a formal back-translation was not performed. The external-regulation subscale also had lower internal consistency than the other measures, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.671, so findings involving that construct require particular caution.

The measurement model had acceptable but not uniformly strong fit: the chi-square ratio was 4.082, the root mean square error of approximation was 0.078, the comparative fit index was 0.918 and the Tucker-Lewis index was 0.903. Correlations initially produced a seemingly straightforward picture. Parental psychological control was positively correlated with employment anxiety at r = 0.302, while career self-efficacy was negatively correlated with it at r = −0.379; both relationships were significant at p < 0.001. Neither motivational-regulation measure had a significant zero-order correlation with anxiety. That pattern changed in the multivariable model, where both identified and external regulation were positively associated with anxiety after the two predictors were considered jointly.

The parallel mediation analysis produced four statistically significant indirect paths, assessed with 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples. Lower external regulation and lower identified regulation each helped explain the positive association between parental control and anxiety. The indirect effect through identified regulation was −0.0205, with a 95% confidence interval from −0.041 to −0.005, while the path through external regulation was −0.0155, with an interval from −0.033 to −0.002. By contrast, higher self-efficacy was associated with more identified and external regulation, and both routes then showed positive indirect associations with anxiety. The path through identified regulation was the largest, with an estimate of 0.1291 and a 95% interval of 0.068 to 0.203; the external-regulation path was 0.0378, with an interval of 0.011 to 0.073.

These opposing direct and indirect paths created what the researchers termed masking, or suppression, effects. Parental control had a positive direct association with anxiety but a negative total indirect association through motivation, attenuating its overall relationship by a reported 18.45%. Career self-efficacy had a negative direct association with anxiety but a positive indirect association through motivation, offsetting 28.74% of that direct relationship. Its total association with anxiety nevertheless remained negative, with an unstandardized total effect of −0.414 and a 95% bootstrap confidence interval from −0.551 to −0.285. In short, greater career confidence predicted less anxiety overall, but it was also linked to stronger motivation for employment goals and greater concern about their outcomes.

The authors caution against interpreting the positive links between both forms of motivation and anxiety as evidence that motivation is inherently harmful. Identified regulation may encourage exploration, clearer goals and active engagement, while external regulation may reflect attention to practical needs such as income, employment security and social evaluation. At the same time, a highly uncertain job market can make intense goal commitment feel burdensome and keep outcomes at the center of a student’s attention. The proposed explanation—that employment pressure and uncertainty help account for these associations—is theoretically plausible, but the study did not directly measure either condition. The results also do not show that a less anxious student is necessarily better adjusted: weaker motivation could reduce goal-related pressure while also indicating less engagement with career preparation.

Several design limitations prevent strong causal or broad population claims. The convenience sample came from a single university and consisted entirely of third-year students nearing graduation, so the findings may not extend to students in other academic years, institutions, countries or labor markets. The cross-sectional questionnaire design cannot establish temporal order, and all core variables were self-reported. The model omitted potentially important influences such as perceived employment pressure, career adaptability and social support, and it did not test whether career self-efficacy itself changes as students approach graduation. With 509 students and a convenience sampling method, the results are best understood as a detailed snapshot of a particular transition period. They nevertheless show that employment anxiety is statistically linked not only to family pressure and personal confidence, but also to the way students regulate their motivation while confronting an uncertain labor market.

Subject of Research: How parental psychological control, career self-efficacy and motivational regulation are associated with employment anxiety among Chinese college students approaching graduation.

Article Title: The effects of parental psychological control and career decision-making self-efficacy on college students’ employment anxiety: the mediating role of motivational regulation

Article References: Guo, P., Wang, C., Fu, H., & Zhang, J. (2026). The effects of parental psychological control and career decision-making self-efficacy on college students’ employment anxiety: the mediating role of motivational regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1947477. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1947477

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1947477

Keywords: employment anxiety, parental psychological control, career self-efficacy, motivational regulation, identified regulation, external regulation, college students, job search, Self-Determination Theory, China, effects, parental