Personal and situational variables, and career concerns

The Spanish Journal of Psychology 2011, Vol. 14 No. 1, 263-271 doi:10.5209/rev_SJOP.2011.v14.n1.23

Copyright 2011 by The Spanish Journal of Psychology ISSN 1138-7416

Personal and Situational Variables, and Career Concerns: Predicting Career Adaptability in Young Adults
Zahra Yousefi, Mohammadreza Abedi, Iran Baghban, Ozra Eatemadi, and Ahmade Abedi
University of Isfahan (Iran)

Thisstudy examined relationships among career adaptability and career concerns, social support and goal orientation. We surveyed 304 university students using measures of career concerns, adaptability (career planning, career exploration, self-exploration, decision-making, self-regulation), goalorientation (learning, performance-prove, performance-avoid) and social support (family, friends, significantothers). Multiple regression analysis revealed career concerns, learning and performanceprove goal orientations emerged relatively as the most important contributors. Other variables did not contribute significantly.
Keywords: career adaptability, personal and situational variables, career concern.

En este trabajo se examinaron las relaciones entre adaptabilidad profesional e interesesprofesionales, respaldo social y orientación hacia una meta. Se registraron las respuestas de 304 estudiantes en términos de interés profesional, adaptabilidad (carrera profesional, exploración profesional, autoexploración, toma de decisiones y autorregulación), orientación hacia una meta (aprendizaje, pruebas de rendimiento, evitación del rendimiento) y respaldo social (familia, amigos y otras personassignificativas). Un análisis de regresión múltiple indicó que el interés profesional, aprendizaje, pruebas de rendimiento y orientación hacia una meta despuntaban con respecto a otras variables que no contribuían significativamente. Palabras clave: adaptabilidad profesional, variables personales y situacionales, interés profesional.

We are most appreciative of professor Creed who generouslyprovided us with his all documents. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Zahra Yousefi. Isfahan University. Phone: +98-3112642644. Fax: +98-3112222408. E-mail: z.yousefi85@yahoomail.com

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YOUSEFI, ABEDI, BAGHBAN, EATEMADI, AND ABEDI

Adaptability has become an essential characteristic of workers in the modern world. Serial careers are becoming the norm intoday’s rapidly changing workforce, necessitating ongoing career transitions across the life span (Porfeli & Vondracek, 2008). Career adaptability is a psychological construct that denotes an individual’s readiness and resources for coping with current and imminent vocational development tasks, occupational transitions and personal traumas. Adaptability shapes self-extension in to the socialenvironment (Savickas, 2005). Despite the importance of career adaptability as construct, there have no research about it in Iran. Creed, Fallon and Hood (2009) investigated the relationships between career adaptability, person and situation variables and career concerns in young adults. The study showed that the career adaptability (career planning, career exploration, self-exploration, decision-making,and self-regulation) were inter- related and could be represented by a higherorder factor. Decision-making and self-exploration were negatively associated with career concerns, and decisionmaking mediated the relationship between goal-orientation and career concerns. Having more of a learning orientation was associated with more decision-making and fewer career concerns, whereas holding aperformance-prove orientation was associated with poorer decision-making and more career concerns. As regard to the results, we repeated the study among students in Isafahan University. We tested whether social support, career concerns and goal orientation can explain career adaptability. To days, changing society is unable to prompt orderly development, thus forcing individuals to respond to a wide...