Career identity and the complex mediating relationships between career preparatory actions and career progress markers
Section snippets
Career preparation and career identity
According to career construction theory (Savickas, 2002), the processes of career planning and exploration reflect critical, adaptive, and lifelong activities, which are activated especially during career transitions. They help individuals manage transitions and contribute to more functional career development and better psychosocial adjustment (Savickas, 1997, Skorikov and Vondracek, 2011, Zikic and Klehe, 2006). This is consistent with the broader and more inclusive career exploration
Career preparation, career identity, and career outcomes
Identity represents the central agency mechanism in career development. It is influenced by career preparation (i.e., exploration and planning; Stringer et al., 2011), and associated with various career-related and well-being outcomes (Skorikov & Vondracek, 2011). Fugate, Kinicki, and Ashforth (2004), for instance, argued that career identity was the major stimulus to perceptions of one's employability. Career identity (i.e., achievement) is also related to better reasoning about future career
Participants
The sample comprised 667 young adults (72.9% female; 3% did not report gender) recruited from the authors' university and an associated technical college in a large regional city on the east coast of Australia. The average age was 20.24 years (SD = 2.46). Participants were working (63.4%) or non-working (31%) university (87%) or technical college (5.5%) students, or working (2.4%) or unemployed (0.7%) non-students (2.5% did not report study/work information). They were enrolled in a wide range of
Results
Two analytical steps were taken. First, to assess hypotheses 1 to 5, we tested the measurement and predicted structural mediation models using latent variable analyses (i.e., structural equation modeling with maximum likelihood estimation in AMOS 22). Second, to test Hypothesis 6, we assessed the predicted moderator to this mediation model using conditional process analyses in PROCESS for SPSS (V2.13; Hayes, 2013, Hayes, in press).
Items were first parceled to form observed variables to
Discussion
We assessed a model that was informed by the three career developmental perspectives of career construction, career identity, and career exploration (Flum and Blustein, 2006, Savickas, 2002, Skorikov and Vondracek, 2011). The key mechanism in the model was career identity, which linked career exploration and planning to perceived employability and career distress. The effect of career calling was also assessed. Consistent with previous research, we found that young adults who engaged in more
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