Does Chinese Social Work Students’ Career Intention Match Their Professional Identity? The Role of Background Factors

Abstract Professional identity is essential for the career choice of social work. Exploring social work students’ perceptions of professional identity and career intention is necessary to understand the phenomenon of major-to-occupation mismatch in China. The present study involved a national sample of 2,018 social work undergraduates and postgraduates to investigate whether students displayed matching levels of professional identity and career intention and the association with their personal and educational background. To differentiate between social work as a discipline and an occupation, the concept of professional identity was split into two variables: disciplinary and occupational identity. Three groups of students were identified and labelled as having matching perceptions (49.8/44.1 per cent), lower disciplinary/occupational identity and higher career intention (7.8/5.6 per cent) and higher disciplinary/occupational identity and lower career intention (42.5/50.3 per cent), respectively. Multinomial logistic regression analyses revealed that students’ residential area, family economic status, degree programme, grade of study, university category and university location were significantly associated with whether they reported matching levels of professional identity and career intention. The findings can be explained by the imbalanced development of social work education and practice in China, implying the necessity of promoting social work employment benefits and cooperation between academic institutions and service organisations.