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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the construct of work ethic as measured by a Korean translation of the Employability Skills Assessment (KESA) testing the construct validity and reliabilities of each subscale of the KESA. The work ethic of Korean people was also compared using two independent variables, generation and gender. Participants were 450 Korean Baby Boomers (1955-1963), Generation X (1964-1981), and Millennials (1982-1999) in South Korea. The Employability Skills Assessment (ESA; Hill, 1995) consists of 23 brief statements using a 7-point Likert scale to assess work ethic. The KESA is a Korean version of the ESA developed to provide a research-based instrument and intended to enable Korean people to evaluate their work ethic. After factor analytic procedures, including a principal component analysis (PCA), a maximum likelihood (ML) and a principal axis factoring (PAF) using the varimax orthogonal rotation method were performed, a five-factor model was selected and interpreted as a common factor model of the KESA. The factors extracted include: (Initiative) for Factor 1, (Interpersonal Skills) for Factor 2, (Dependability) for Factor 3, (Thoughtfulness) for Factor 4, and (Reversed Items) for Factor 5. Reliability coefficients of each factor of the KESA were calculated using Cronbachs alpha. A MANOVA was performed to compare the work ethic of Korean people between women and men and three generations. The results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in scores for the work ethic subscales of the KESA between Korean women and men. Also, there were no statistically significant effects of the interaction between gender and generation on the first four subscales of work ethic except the fifth factor, (reversed items). However, there were statistically significant differences for generation on the three subscales of (initiative), (dependability) and (reversed items) as measured by the KESA in South Korea.