Abstract:

Due to the challenges faced by higher education (HE) students in integrating or reintegrating into the workforce, career interventions have gained prominence for their critical role in enhancing students' readiness to tackle professional challenges. Distance career interventions have increasingly been adopted to reach a broader and more diverse audience, encompassing varying personal characteristics, socioeconomic contexts, and geographical regions, being its efficacy influenced by a range of variables. Based on the Self-Determination Theory, this study aims to analyze the influence of motivational variables on the gains obtained in a distance intervention program focused on promoting four dimensions of career resources – Knowledge and skills, Environment, Motivation, and Career management. Motivational variables include students' perception of Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence, Interest/Satisfaction, and Utility. The sample included 188 Portuguese university students from different academic years and fields of study enrolled in a distance career intervention for six weeks. Paired samples tests were run to analyze pre- and post-test results, and the differences between career resources' scores before and after the intervention were calculated. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to examine the association between the career resources and the gains obtained with the program. Results showed an increase in career resources after the intervention.

Results also evidenced:
a) a positive association between the gains obtained in the Knowledge and skills dimension and every motivational variable;
b) a lack of association between the gains obtained in the Environment dimension and any motivational variable;
c) an influence of the motivational variables Autonomy, Competence, and Utility in the gains observed in the Motivation dimension; and
d) an association between the gains in the Career management dimension and the variable Competence.

These results suggest that the distance intervention program had an effect on the promotion of university students' career resources and that gains achieved with the intervention were either not associated or only weakly associated with motivational variables. Implications for practice and research will be discussed.

Keywords:

Career resources, distance intervention, higher education, motivation.