A study of employment anxiety in college women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop "Employment Anxiety Scale" to understand the structure of anxiety accompanying employment seeking. First, 30 items of anxiety related to employment seeking were collected with an open-ended questionnaire, for which 65 female students answered. In the main study, 465 female undergraduates filled out a questionnaire of the thirty items, a stress scale, and a self-report depression scale. Factor analysis found three factors for the anxiety items: employment seeking activity, vocational aptitude, and workplace. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between the mental-health scales and the anxiety. The dependent variables were the stress and depression scores, and the predictors the subscale scores of Employment Anxiety Scale. Results showed that anxiety accompanying employment-seeking activity was highly predictive of the mental-health scores.