Developmental trajectories and reciprocal associations between career adaptability and vocational identity: A three-wave longitudinal study with adolescents

How do career adaptability and proactive career behaviours interrelate over time? An inter‐ and intraindividual investigation

“…We opted for these time lags because career processes typically do not occur on the microlevel (e.g., on a daily basis), and an overall time span of 9 months is long enough to evoke changes in career adaptability and proactive career behaviours (Guan et al, 2017;Negru-Subtirica et al, 2015;Zacher, 2014). Time lags were 3 months between Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2), and about 6 months between T2 and Time 3 (T3).…”

“…Time lags were 3 months between Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2), and about 6 months between T2 and Time 3 (T3). We opted for these time lags because career processes typically do not occur on the microlevel (e.g., on a daily basis), and an overall time span of 9 months is long enough to evoke changes in career adaptability and proactive career behaviours (Guan et al, 2017;Negru-Subtirica et al, 2015;Zacher, 2014). Moreover, longer time spans (e.g., several years) might be too long to detect the lagged effects of initial career adaptability on proactive career behaviour changes because the assumed behavioural control mechanism might fade out over such longer time spans.…”

“…Negru-Subtirica et al (2015) showed that intraindividual career adaptability and career exploration (which is one indicator of proactive career behaviours) trajectories slightly decreased over a time span of 4 months within a sample of 8 th to 12 th grade students. Negru-Subtirica et al (2015) showed that intraindividual career adaptability and career exploration (which is one indicator of proactive career behaviours) trajectories slightly decreased over a time span of 4 months within a sample of 8 th to 12 th grade students.…”

“…We identified only a few empirical studies that have focused on relationships of changes between career adaptability and proactive career behaviours. Negru-Subtirica et al (2015) showed that intraindividual career adaptability and career exploration (which is one indicator of proactive career behaviours) trajectories slightly decreased over a time span of 4 months within a sample of 8 th to 12 th grade students. However, these intraindividual developments have not been investigated conjointly, although a variability between these trajectories indicated that such an analysis is meaningful.…”

“…Although career adaptability and proactive career behaviours are meaningfully related to several work-related outcomes and represent two related constructs in CCT (Guan et al, 2017;Hirschi, Herrmann, & Keller, 2015;Savickas, 2005;Savickas & Porfeli, 2012), we still know little about the development and dynamic interdependence of these two constructs. The few studies that have analysed change in either career adaptability or proactive career behaviours largely neglected intraindividual development, that is to say, if and how every single individual's developmental trajectory increases or decreases over time (Guan et al, 2017;Negru-Subtirica, Pop, & Crocetti, 2015;Nilforooshan & Salimi, 2016). This is not fully satisfying because CCT makes assumptions about dynamic career processes and highlights the need to investigate developmental aspects within career adaptability research (Guan et al, 2017;Savickas, 2005).…”