Based on the life history perspective, this study tested a serial mediation model in which family socioeconomic status (SES) related to person-job fit via resource scarcity, career exploration, and goal persistence. We expected that when seeking employment, higher SES students would perceive lower resource scarcity, and, in turn, adopt more…

Existing research on the effectiveness of career courses often lacks evidence on the comparative effects of different pedagogical formats. This study compared the effects of a flipped classroom approach to a traditional lecture-based approach for delivering a career course among Chinese undergraduate students. A longitudinal quasi-experimental…

We surveyed Australian adolescents and parents to test differences and congruence in perceptions of adolescent career development tasks (career planning, exploration, certainty, and world-of-work knowledge) and vocational identity. We found that, for adolescents (N = 415), career development tasks (not career exploration) explained 48% of the…

Participants were 181 university students who completed measures of career development (self-efficacy, perceived barriers, distress, planning, and exploration) and goal adjustment capacity (disengagement and reengagement). We expected (a) that when contemplating unachievable goals, those with a higher capacity to adjust their goals (i.e., to…

The authors surveyed 186 first-year university students and assessed their level of career compromise associated with making the transition to university. Compromise was operationalized as the discrepancy between the job characteristics of ideal and expected occupations. The authors also assessed career well-being (satisfaction, distress), action…

This study used social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), as a framework to investigate predictors of career choice actions, operationalised as career planning and career exploration. The model was tested cross-sectionally and longitudinally with 631 high school students enrolled in Grades 10-12. Students completed measures of…

We surveyed 245 first-year university students using measures of career concerns, career adaptability (career planning, career exploration, self-exploration, decision-making, self-regulation), goal-orientation (learning, performance-prove, performance-avoid) and social support (family, friends, significant others), and tested: (a) whether the…

Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) recognises the importance of individual differences and contextual influences in the career decision-making process. In extending the SCCT choice model, this study tested the role of personality, social supports, and the SCCT variables of self-efficacy, outcome expectations and goals in explaining the career…

This study assessed 166 high school students in Grade 8 and again in Grade 10. Four models were tested: (a) whether the T1 predictor variables (career knowledge, indecision, decision-making selfefficacy, self-esteem, demographics) predicted the outcome variable (career planning/exploration) at T1; (b) whether the T1 predictor variables predicted…

One hundred and thirty final year high school students were administered scales tapping optimism/pessimism, self-esteem, external career barriers, career decision-making self-efficacy, career focus and career indecision. It was hypothesised, first, that cognitive style optimism/pessimism) would predict both internal (self-esteem) and external…