Using methods of multidimensional analysis to research decision making in academic career choice

Abstract

The decision that students make regarding his or her further education or professional career is a complex process driven by multiple different factors. On the global scale, this research direction represents an important strategic tangent, given the significance of the universities in the formation of virtually all aspects of one’s life after graduation. It is equally crucial in the Ukrainian context, considering the educational reforms that are currently taking place in our country. As motivation to make a choice and embark on a particular career trajectory can be informed by different sources and is thus a multifactorial entity, so researching factors that affect academic career choice should accomodate multiple dimensions. To optimize the analytical procedures and to increase the informativeness of the results in our survey we employ methods of multidimensional analysis to explore and explain various aspects of decision making that can influence one’s choice of the institution for further education. To elicit the determinants of the university choice and to illustrate the effects of various factors in different domains of career choice, we use the cognitive self-report data collected from the NaUKMA undergraduates in Spring 2019. The results suggest that in students’ perception institutional characteristics of the NaUKMA, social atmosphere, academic climate and personal features of a student emerge as distinct factors. In the set of factors, the institutional characteristics were subdivided into the evaluation of the quality of the received education and strategic argument against applying for a postgraduate degree at the NaUKMA. Social atmosphere and academic climate, in their turn, split into social atmosphere, academic climate and being socially connected with individuals currently enrolled as MA students. Personal features were further subdivided into career values, attitudes toward one’s studies and attitudes towards the MA programmes. Positive evaluation of NaUKMA’s institutional characteristics has a positive correlation with one’s intentions of joining the programme and continuing one’s studies at NaUKMA, and a negative correlation with planning to apply to MA programmes abroad or elsewhere in Ukraine. Planning to avail of the international mobility programmes had a positive effect on choosing to join the MA programme at NaUKMA.