Purpose: This study aimed to identify the social responsibility, self-leadership, and career-preparation behavior of fourth-year students graduating from the 4-year program of the department of dental technology and provide basic data for developing specific methods and related programs to help graduates adopt positive and active career preparation behavior.
Methods: The final analysis was performed using 143 questionnaires from fourth-year students of the 4-year department of dental technology at Gyeonggi-do, Gangwon-do, and Busan Metropolitan City. T-tests, analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and linear regression analysis were performed in IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 21.0 (IBM).
Results: A significant positive correlation was found (p<0.01) between social responsibility, self-leadership, and career preparation behavior factors, and the detailed factors of self-leadership that influence career preparation behavior, “attitude” (p<0.05), “natural reward strategies” (p<0.001), “behavior-focused strategies” (p<0.01), and “constructive thought pattern strategies” (p<0.01) demonstrated significant relationships. The explanatory power values of the models were 50.7% and 52.9%, respectively.
Conclusion: This study concluded that to improve career preparation behaviour, social participation through various major volunteer activities is needed to ensure students feel professional responsibility and guide and encourage participation in various self-development programs during their time in university. In addition, universities and departments need to develop step-by-step and various career-preparation behavior programs for each year level.

Keywords: Career preparation behavior, Dental technology students, Self-leadership, Social responsibility