Personality, Career Decision-Making and Career Expectations: A Primary Report from Malawi

The relationship between personality, career decision-making and career expectations among Malawi undergraduate students has never been studied, and the shortage of students becomes a serious problem in facing the education system of this southeastern African nation. A cross-sectional was methodologically designed with randomly selected 270 Malawian undergraduate students from the 3 large-scale universities. The Big Five Inventory (BFI-10), General Decision-Making Styles Questionnaire (DGMS) and Career Expectation Questionnaire were given to all participants who already signed for their future career paths guidance. Mean score differences were analyzed by gender and major comparison. Then, the career expectation model was tested. The results showed that students with science major showed higher score significantly in competition, freedom, management, learning and entrepreneurship in career expectation than those from humanities. The hypothesized model concluded that only the personality traits of conscientiousness and openness significantly influenced career expectation through decision-making as a mediator, with significant level indices: chi(2)(125) = 232.70, chi(2)/df = 1.86, CFI = .87, GFI = .92, RMSEA = .05. The findings offer implications regarding how conscientiousness and openness enhance career expectation through decision-making. It is recommended the administrators should focus on personality as an important psychological factor which effect students' career expectation, as well as, build environmental support by including vocational guidance to students for future decision making of their career paths.