• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.134-145
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to examine the work values of undergraduate-level foodservice major students. In order to assess work values of the participating students, this study adopted 'Maryland Work Values Inventory'. Data from a total of 290 surveys were collected. The participants consisted of 146 commercial foodservice major students and 144 institutional foodservice major students. Among the seven work values, both groups ranked 'job advancement' as the most important work value. Commercial foodservice major students rated 'altruism' as the least important work value, whereas it was 'stimulation' for institutional foodservice major students. 'Need for work' was evaluated statistically higher by junior and senior students compared to sophomore students of commercial foodservice major (p<0.05). In both foodservice majors, a positive relationship was found between work value scores and grade levels. All work value scores tended to be higher for students in higher grades. This tendency was especially statistically clear for the value 'need for work' for commercial foodservice major students and 'money and prestige' for institutional foodservice major students (p<0.05). There were some gaps in the work values between students with different career field choices. For the commercial foodservice majors, those interested in fine dining perceived 'satisfaction and accomplishment' and 'altruism' as more important [4.33 (p<0.05) and 4.05 (p<0.01), respectively] compared to students who had interests in fast food restaurants (4.06 and 3.67 respectively). Scores for 'satisfaction & accomplishment' (p<0.05), 'money & prestige' (p<0.001), and 'stimulation' (p<0.001) were significantly different among institutional foodservice major students. In addition, students more interested in industrial foodservice field regarded 'money & prestige' and 'stimulation' as less important as indicated by noticeably lower scores (3.74, 3.55 respectively) in comparison to the other group (p<0.001). The results of this study, which explored foodservice major students' work values, suggest that there is an increased need for the students to build up their work values as well as for the foodservice industry to offer appropriate work values to future foodservice employees.