The present study sought to develop and validate an instrument to measure work volition, defined as the perceived capacity to make occupational choices despite constraints, among college students. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted with a large and diverse sample of college students, finding a reliable scale with two factors, volition and constraints. In Study 2, with a new sample of college students, a confirmatory factor analysis was completed finding a final 16-item scale with strong model fit and internal consistency. In addition, the Work Volition Scale–Student Version (WVS-SV) was found to correlate in expected directions with career decision self-efficacy, core self-evaluations, career locus of control, career barriers, and the Big 5 personality traits. Finally, in Study 3, the WVS-SV was found to have strong test–retest reliability. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

The present study examined the relation of work volition to career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) and academic satisfaction in a diverse sample of 447 undergraduate college students. Work volition was found to be moderately correlated with academic satisfaction and strongly correlated with CDSE. Potential mediators and moderators in the link of work volition to CDSE and academic satisfaction were also examined. Work locus of control (WLOC) was found to partially mediate these relations, and bootstrapping techniques confirmed the significance of indirect effects. Additionally, the moderating effects of gender and ethnicity in these relations were examined. Although gender was not a significant moderator in either relation, ethnicity was found to moderate the relation between work volition and academic satisfaction, such that work volition related more strongly to academic satisfaction for those who self-identified as White, relative to those who did not. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Research productivity affects the careers of academic psychologists. Unfortunately, there is a surprising lack of consensus on productivity's meaning, measurement, and how to compare the productivity of one academic psychologist to another. In the present study, we review academic productivity research within psychology, and using a sample of 673 psychologists, compute six indexes of productivity. Most productivity metrics (publication count, citation count, or some combination of the two) were substantially interrelated and one (Integrated Research Productivity Index) was independent from years in the field. Female psychologists were equally as productive as male psychologists after accounting for years in the field, and pre-tenure psychologists showed steeper change-over-time productivity slopes than post-tenure psychologists. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for the use and measurement of academic research productivity.

The present study examined correlates of work volition-the perceived capacity to make occupational choices despite constraints-with a diverse sample of 213 U.S. veterans. Veterans with higher levels of formal education, higher yearly incomes, were married, and were employed, endorsed greater work volition. Those who experienced lower posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, endorsed lower levels of neuroticism, higher levels of conscientiousness, and higher levels of internal locus of control, also demonstrated greater levels of work volition. A structural model was run where PTSD symptoms, neuroticism, and conscientiousness were hypothesized to predict work volition via locus of control and compared with an alternative model. After identifying a best fitting model, bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that locus of control fully mediated the relations between PTSD symptoms, neuroticism, and conscientiousness to work volition. Specifically, the key reason PTSD symptoms, neuroticism, and conscientiousness were related to work volition was their effect on general locus of control. Practical implications are discussed.

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