Career Choice Motivations and Turnover Intention Among Chinese Social Workers: A Double-Mediator Model of Job Self-Efficacy and Job Satisfaction

ABSTRACT

High turnover rate has been a challenge in social work practice and the predictive roles and mechanisms of career choice motivation on turnover intention have not been examined in China. This study examined the relationship between career choice motivation and turnover intention mediated by job self-efficacy and job satisfaction. A sample of 5485 participants was obtained from China Social Work Longitudinal Study (CSWLS) 2019. Results illustrate that internal motivation was negatively associated with turnover intention, whereas job efficacy and job satisfaction fully mediated the relationship. However, external motivation was positively related to enhance turnover intention and partially mediated by job efficacy and job satisfaction. The findings suggest that social work educators should develop students’ internal motivation and that social work agencies need to screen practitioners with higher internal motivation and to enhance their job self-efficacy and job satisfaction.

PRACTICE POINTS

• Different career choice motivations have different effects on Chinese social workers’ turnover intention, with internal motivation reducing turnover intention while external motivation increasing it.

• There is a deeper mechanism by which career choice motivation affects turnover intention, with two career choice motivations affecting turnover intention through job efficacy and job satisfaction.

• Social work agencies need to establish mechanisms to screen practitioners with internal motivation and to enhance job efficacy and job satisfaction of social workers.

• Social work education needs to foster internal motivation in students, not just constant enrollment expansion.

KEYWORDS:

• Career choice motivation
• Chinese social worker
• job satisfaction
• job self-efficacy
• turnover intention

Acknowledgments

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data-set used for this manuscript belongs to the CSWLS2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Social Work Academy [grant number XTJH222402] and the China Ministry of Education [grant number 19YJC840015].