Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Individuals are continuously learning and improving over a lifetime.This continuous, self-directed learning can be very important for individual career success because organizations improve through the continuous learning of the employees.Yet, there is little research about how individuals choose between multiple domains.This study investigates how individuals use beliefs about their relative strengths and weaknesses to allocate resources to learning.To develop a set of hypotheses, the literatures on self-regulation, motivation, learning, and goal orientation are reviewed.Specifically, the role flexibility context of individuals, meaning how much control individuals have over which roles relevant to a particular task are most important, was hypothesized as an important predictor of learning choice.Anticipated relative improvement, or the belief in which area may improve more in a certain amount of time, was also hypothesized as a predictor and hypothesized to interact with learning goal orientation.Participants (N = 171) were assigned to either a high role flexible or a low role flexible condition and were given the chance to choose to study either a relative strength or a relative weakness.Logistic regression analyses were conducted.Role flexibility condition was a significant predictor.Anticipated relative improvement also predicted study topic choice.The predicted interaction between relative improvement and goal orientation did not relate to study topic choice.Limitations and future research are discussed in terms of construct, internal, and external validity.
Author: Leah R. Halper
Institution: Ohio University
Language: English
Subfield: Applied Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2474573197