Presenter(s): Megan Ahern – Education Foundations
Faculty Mentor(s): Nané Kochoian, Jenefer Husman
Poster 103
Research Area: Educational Psychology
The focus of an individual’s goals has been shown to shift during one’s lifetime. Occupational Future Time Perspective (OFTP) is a domain-specific Future Time Perspective that refers to employee’s perceptions of their occupational future time horizon and the future perceived opportunities in their professional life. This research aimed to contribute to a better understanding of the importance and relevance of OFTP in the prediction of workers’ professional goals. We predicted that high scores of focus on opportunities and open-ended remaining time, as well as high scores of learning and performance goal orientations positively predict growth-related goals, whereas both high scores negatively predict generativity goals. The sample consisted of 545 French-speaking Belgian employees in administrative positions (63.9% female; ages= 25-65 years). Relations between occupational future time perspective, age, goal orientation approach, and goal content were explored. This was done by using an eight-item scale based on previous research on OFTP (Zacher 2013; Zacher & Frese, 2009) to measure focus on opportunities and perceived remaining time in their career. The findings suggest that individuals’ broader goal orientation affects the content of daily specific goals, as well as suggesting a positive link between leaning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. This research is significant because it introduces Future Time Perspective into the area of careers and occupations, and establishes the relationship between perceptions of occupational future time horizons and perceived opportunities of employees and how this relationship affects work-related outcomes.