The relationship between attitude toward religion, value system, and personality traits

Some recent investigations have focused on the relationships between pro-social work motivation to serve others through one’s future career and vocational outcomes. The three major lines of ongoing research suggest that (1) eudaimonic activities are related to higher levels of life satisfaction, meaning in life and self-esteem (Steger et al., 2008), (2) the service learning activities within an academic context have positive effects on the improvement of vocational development in terms of self-efficacy and self knowledge (Payne, 2000; Simons & Cleary, 2006); and (3) pro-social work motivation has effects not only on work-related outcomes, such as persistence, satisfaction, performance and productivity (Grant, 2008), but also on the development of an individual’s future career in terms of life meaning, career decision self-efficacy and intrinsic work motivation (Dik, Sargent & Steger, 2008). In Italy, however, there has been a lack of research into valid ways of assessing service motivation and analysing in depth a number of variables concerning both personality traits and needs/values, according to Schwartz’s Values Model and therefore dealing with vocational identity, that may precede, follow or relate to this career development. The present study aims to: 1. Provide a contribution to both the reliability and the construct validity of the Service Motivation Scale (SMS); 2. Explore the relationship between motivation to serve others and a values system with other individual characteristics, such as personality traits. 312 adolescents and young people living in Apulia were asked to fill in a questionnaire made up of four sections: socio-demographic data, SMS, PVQ and a Big Five Questionnaire. Causal analysis is applied to data to infer the structure of the interconnection between variables of interest. References Dik, B. J., Sargent, A. M., & Steger, M. F. (2008). Career development strivings: Assessing goals and motivation in career decision-making and planning. Journal of Career Development, 35, 23-41. Duffy, R. D., & Raque-Bogdan, T. L. (2010). The Motivation to serve others: Exploring relations to career development. Journal of Career Assessment, 18(3), 250-265. Grant, A. M. (2008). Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 48-58. Eyler, J. S., & Giles, D. E. (1999). Where’s the learning in service learning? San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Payne, C. A. (2000). Changes in involvement preferences as measured by the community service involvement preference inventory. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 7, 41-53. 96 Simons, L., & Cleary, B. (2006). The influence of service learning on students’ personal and social development. College Teaching, 54, 307-319. Steger, M. F., Kashdan, T. B., & Oishi, S. (2008). Being good by doing good: Daily eudaimonic activity and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 22-42.