The serial multiple mediating effects of career decision-making self-efficacy and social support on the relationship between career motivation and self-leadership of university students

Objectives The purpose of this study is to verify the serial multiple mediating effects of career decision-making self-efficacy and social support on the relationship between career motivation and self-leadership of university students. Methods To this end, the results of 351 responses were analyzed, excluding 13 non-response and unfaithful re-sponses, among 364 fourth-year students at H University in Seoul. As for the relationship between the variables, Pearson's titration correlation analysis was performed, and Hayes (2018)'s PROCESS Macro Model 6 was used to analyze the serial multiple mediator model. Results As a result, first, there was a statistically significant positive(+) correlation between university students' career motivation, self-leadership, career decision-making self-efficacy, and social support. Second, in the rela-tionship between university students' career motivation and self-leadership, the mediating effect of career deci-sion-making self-efficacy was found to be significant, but the mediating effect of social support was not. In addi-tion, the serial multiple mediating effects of career decision-making self-efficacy and social support was found to be significant. Conclusions These findings suggest that synergy occurs when an individual's intrinsic psychological variable of career decision-making self-efficacy and external environmental variable of social support are sequentially medi-ated in the relationship between university students' career motivation and self-leadership. In addition, it is mean-ingful in that it has expanded the research area of self-leadership, which is emphasized as an important part of individual life.