Abstract
This research tested the relationship between career adaptability and academic performance and the incremental validity of career adaptability in predicting academic performance, as well as the mediation role of career adaptability in the relationship between personality and academic performance. 437 undergraduate students completed measures of the Big Five and HEXACO personality models and career adaptability. Academic performance was measured relying on students’ GPA. Results showed that career adaptability was positively related to academic performance. Career adaptability was predicted by Big Five extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness. Following the traditional approach (hierarchic regression) career adaptability showed incremental validity in predicting academic performance. However, career adaptability did not predict academic performance after the effect of Big Five and HEXACO models of personality was controlled using SEM analysis. Moreover, career adaptability mediated the relationship between Big Five extraversion, conscientiousness, HEXACO openness and academic performance. Implications of the results are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackerman, P. L., & Heggestad, E. D. (1997). Intelligence, personality, and interests: Evidence for overlapping traits. Psychological Bulletin, 121(2), 219.
Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO–60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(4), 340–345.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173.
Bauer, K. W., & Liang, Q. (2003). The effect of personality and precollege characteristics on first-year activities and academic performance. Journal of College Student Development, 44(3), 277–290.
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2003). Personality predicts academic performance: Evidence from two longitudinal university samples. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(4), 319–338.
Chan, S. H. J., & Mai, X. (2015). The relation of career adaptability to satisfaction and turnover intentions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 89, 130–139.
Conard, M. A. (2006). Aptitude is not enough: How personality and behavior predict academic performance. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(3), 339–346.
Dudley, N. M., Orvis, K. A., Lebiecki, J. E., & Cortina, J. M. (2006). A meta-analytic investigation of conscientiousness in the prediction of job performance: Examining the intercorrelations and the incremental validity of narrow traits. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(1), 40–57.
Duffy, R. D., Douglass, R. P., & Autin, K. L. (2015). Career adaptability and academic satisfaction: Examining work volition and self-efficacy as mediators. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 90, 46–54.
Farsides, T., & Woodfield, R. (2003). Individual differences and undergraduate academic success: The roles of personality, intelligence, and application. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(7), 1225–1243.
Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26.
Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48(1), 26.
Guan, Y., Deng, H., Sun, J., Wang, Y., Cai, Z., Ye, L., et al. (2013). Career adaptability, job search self-efficacy and outcomes: A three-wave investigation among Chinese university graduates. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 83(3), 561–570.
Haladyna, T. M., & Downing, S. M. (2004). Construct-irrelevant variance in high-stakes testing. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 23(1), 17–27.
Hartung, P. J., Porfeli, E. J., & Vondracek, F. W. (2008). Career adaptability in childhood. The Career Development Quarterly, 57(1), 63–74.
Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Publications.
Haynes, S. N., & Lench, H. C. (2003). Incremental validity of new clinical assessment measures. Psychological Assessment, 15(4), 456.
Koen, J., Klehe, U. C., & Van Vianen, A. E. (2012). Training career adaptability to facilitate a successful school-to-work transition. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 81(3), 395–408.
Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO personality inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(2), 329–358.
Lievens, F., De Corte, W., & Schollaert, E. (2008). A closer look at the frame-of-reference effect in personality scale scores and validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 268.
MacKinnon, D. P., Lockwood, C. M., & Williams, J. (2004). Confidence limits for the indirect effect: Distribution of the product and resampling methods. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(1), 99–128.
Maggiori, C., Johnston, C. S., Krings, F., Massoudi, K., & Rossier, J. (2013). The role of career adaptability and work conditions on general and professional well-being. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 83(3), 437–449.
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (2008). Toward a unified theory of personality: Integrating dispositions and processing dynamics within the cognitive–affective processing system. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality. Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 208–241). New York: The Guilford Press.
O’Connor, M. C., & Paunonen, S. V. (2007). Big Five personality predictors of post-secondary academic performance. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(5), 971–990.
Ohme, M., & Zacher, H. (2015). Job performance ratings: The relative importance of mental ability, conscientiousness, and career adaptability. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87, 161–170.
Paunonen, S. V. (1998). Hierarchical organization of personality and prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2), 538.
Pop, E. I., Negru-Subtirica, O., Crocetti, E., Opre, A., & Meeus, W. (2016). On the interplay between academic achievement and educational identity: A longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescence, 47, 135–144.
Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 322.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 879–891.
Rudolph, C. W., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Career adaptability: A meta-analysis of relationships with measures of adaptivity, adapting responses, and adaptation results. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 98, 17–34.
Saucier, G., Thalmayer, A. G., Payne, D. L., Carlson, R., Sanogo, L., Ole-Kotikash, L., et al. (2014). A basic bivariate structure of personality attributes evident across nine languages. Journal of Personality, 82(1), 1–14.
Savickas, M. L. (1997). Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life-span, life-space theory. The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3), 247–259.
Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In R. W. Lent & S. D. Brown (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 42–70). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.
Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 661–673.
Savickas, M. L. (2013). Career construction theory and practice. In S. D. Brown & L. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling. Putting theory and research to work (pp. 147–186). New Jersey: Wiley.
Teixeira, M. A. P., Bardagi, M. P., Lassance, M. C. P., de Oliveira Magalhães, M., & Duarte, M. E. (2012). Career adapt-abilities scale—Brazilian form: Psychometric properties and relationships to personality. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 680–685.
Tolentino, L. R., Garcia, P. R. J. M., Lu, V. N., Restubog, S. L. D., Bordia, P., & Plewa, C. (2014). Career adaptation: The relation of adaptability to goal orientation, proactive personality, and career optimism. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 84(1), 39–48.
Tomarken, A. J., & Waller, N. G. (2005). Structural equation modeling: Strengths, limitations, and misconceptions. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 31–65.
van Vianen, A. E., Klehe, U. C., Koen, J., & Dries, N. (2012). Career adapt-abilities scale—Netherlands form: Psychometric properties and relationships to ability, personality, and regulatory focus. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 716–724.
Vondracek, F. W., Ford, D. H., & Porfeli, E. J. (2014). A living systems theory of vocational behavior and development. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.
West, S. G., Finch, J. F., & Curran, P. J. (1995). Structural equation models with nonnormal variables: Problems and remedies. In R. H. Hoyle (Ed.), Structural equation modeling: Concepts, issues and applications (pp. 56–75). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Westfall, J., & Yarkoni, T. (2016). Statistically controlling for confounding constructs is harder than you think. PLoS ONE, 11(3), e0152719.
Yves, R. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Avram, E., Burtaverde, V. & Zanfirescu, AȘ. The incremental validity of career adaptability in predicting academic performance. Soc Psychol Educ 22, 867–882 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09505-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09505-6