Objective
The transition from school to the workforce is important for concrete future planning. During this period, people are more likely to experience psychological health problems, such as anxiety and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. In particular, job hunting in individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES) leads to various impulsive behaviors and physical and psychological problems due to a scarcity of economic and time resources. There is a lack of research examining career education and intervention approaches that consider the backgrounds of those experiencing adversities and difficulties due to low SES. Considering these situations, we examined whether shift-and-persist coping strategies (S-P) could buffer the career choice anxiety of individuals with low SES and improve career exploration.
Results
The results from 311 students who preparing/doing for job hunting showed a negative association between S-P and career choice anxiety and a positive association with career exploration. There are no significant effects of the direct link between SES to career exploration and the indirect link between SES and career exploration via career choice anxiety. There was also no buffering effect of S-P use on the above mediating process.
Low socioeconomic status has various adverse effects on health, which can be mitigated through the shift‐and‐persist (S‐P) strategy. Studies have focused on how this strategy can affect health in the face of adversity. However, that children learn this strategy from positive role models, such as parents, is an unexamined precondition of the theory. This study presents one bit of supporting evidence for this precondition by examining the similarity in S‐P among parent–child dyads using the actor‐partner interdependence model. We also examine parent and child strategies related to depressive tendencies based on mixed results in relevant research. The results from 309 parent–child pairs indicate that shifting and persisting tendencies and depressive tendencies were similar among the parent–child pairs. Furthermore, regardless of their socioeconomic status, the parents' and children's persisting scores predicted lower levels of depressive tendencies as actor effects. Although this study does not fully support S‐P theory, it provides important insights regarding similar patterns of strategic tendencies between parents and children and highlights the importance of positive role models.
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