青少年未来取向三种测试途径的比较

Comparison of Three Test Approaches for Adolescents’ Future Orientation

考察未来取向测试新方法(作品分析法)有效性并对比已有测量方法(自陈问卷法、行为测试法)的优缺点。结果发现,问卷法测得的青少年未来取向水平随年龄增长逐渐降低,行为测试法和作品分析法测得的青少年未来取向水平随年龄增长逐渐提高;问卷法测得的未来取向与学校投入相关密切,行为测试法测得的未来取向与学业成绩相关密切,作品分析法测得的未来取向与学校投入、学业成绩均相关。结果说明作品分析法是一种适于反映青少年未来取向发展变化的新测试途径。

Future orientation is an individual’s ability to think and plan for the future, meanwhile it is crucial for well-being, motivation, achievement,adjustment, and behavior. For the adolescents, on the one hand, future orientation can promote the positive development of their academic achievement, career planning and mental health. On the other hand, higher level of future orientation makes them consider the future consequences of current behavior, avoid insecure actions, and protect them from problem behaviors and violence. According to previous studies, the future orientation of adolescents increases with age. In other words, the younger adolescents demonstrate a weaker orientation to the future than the older adolescents.Nowadays, questionnaire survey is the main way for studying future orientation, but it is not suitable for the younger adolescents, because this method would overestimate their abilities. In addition, behavioral testing method could make up for the disadvantage of questionnaire, while it can only measure one respect of future orientation. Therefore, we first applied the work analysis method in the future orientation survey. This paper is aimed to examine the advantages and disadvantages of existing methods(the questionnaire method and the behavior testing method), and to verify the effectiveness of a new method(the work analysis method).Participants were 307 adolescents, including primary school students(84), junior high school students(78), high school students(71), and college students(74). Three methods were used to measure future orientation: the questionnaire method conducted a questionnaire survey among adolescents;the behavior testing method was designed to delay discounting, that is, to judge whether the participants would give up present rewards for prospective and greater ones;the work analysis method required students to write down their own future vision in 10 minutes in order to assess the development of future orientation. At the same time, in order to compare the pros and cons of these three methods, related research explored the relationship between future orientation, school engagement and academic achievement. In this process, school engagement was a subjective evaluation index for the academic achievement, while the final examination result of students was an objective one.The results showed that:(1) According to the questionnaire survey, primary school students owned the highest level of future orientation,followed by college students, junior high school students, and senior high school students, which meant that the younger adolescents’ ability was overestimated.(2) While according to the behavior testing method and the work analysis method, college students owned the highest level of future orientation, followed by junior high school students, senior high school students and primary school students, which meant the adolescents’ future orientation would gradually develop with age.(3) Future orientation measured by the work analysis method was positively related to questionnaire and behavior testing method. While the future orientation measured by the questionnaire was more related to the index of subjective evaluation such as school engagement, the future orientation measured by the behavior testing was more related to the index of objective evaluation such as academic achievement, and the future orientation measured by the work analysis method was connected to both the subjective and objective evaluation indexes.In a word, the present study provided a new valid method for measuring the future orientation of adolescents. This method could not only remedy the disadvantage of questionnaire method in studying the development trends of future orientation, but also measure more aspects than the behavior testing method.