Career transitions of college seniors.

In a study with 191 college students, canonical correlation analysis explored career search self-efficacy and psychological distress (career search set) in relation to psychological resources and regulatory focus (career transition set), producing 2 significant canonical correlations. The 1st correlation dimension showed that decreased career search self-efficacy and increased psychological distress had a moderate relationship with decreased psychological resources and minimal relationship with low promotion focus and high prevention focus. The 2nd dimension illustrated that the increase in anxiety and personal exploration efficacy were associated with increased readiness for the career transition and elevated prevention focus.

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Career search is one of the most important tasks that graduating college students face. For many of these students, this is the first time that they will look for a full-time job or a career path that will become a part of their identity. In addition, this first experience of career search may serve as a basis for their future job search strategies, especially given the recent trend of career changes in adulthood that are caused by rapid shifts in the meaning of career and large layoffs resulting from mergers, downsizing, technological changes, or globalization (Gysbers, Heppner, & Johnston, 2003).

Vigorous research on career search has been conducted to increase understanding of the search process and outcome. In particular, career search self-efficacy, or self-appraised confidence in successfully performing a variety of career search activities (Solberg, Good, Fischer, Brown, & Nord, 1995), has been consistently identified as a construct that predicts career search behaviors and outcome (Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001; Solberg et al., 1995). Moreover, self-efficacy for different career search activities appears to diversify career search behaviors. For example, literature about differentiating networking, or informal career search activities, from formal career search activities has indicated the importance of networking efficacy on the range of career search activities used by individuals (Wanberg, Kanfer, & Banas, 2000).

More recent studies have incorporated affective aspects of career search as a response to the scarcity of affect in previous studies. Although research has been conducted to explain the causal relationship between psychological distress and career search, only equivocal findings have been presented (Cote, Saks, & Zikic, 2006; Crossley & Stanton, 2005). The traditional approach proposed that failure in career search leads to physical and psychological distress (Murphy & Athanasou, 1999). Yet others have argued that decreased psychological well-being affects subsequent career search behavior (Hamilton, Hoffman, Broman, & Rauma, 1993; Taris, 2002).

Specifically, the relationship between affect and career search has been investigated, using career search self-efficacy as a mediator (Crossley & Stanton, 2005). Crossley and Stanton elaborated the research design by differentiating traitlike negative affect and statelike psychological distress as assessed by levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. In their study with graduating college students, they found that career search self-efficacy mediated only the relationship between traitlike negative affect and career search success, not the relationship between statelike psychological distress and career search success. This is an interesting finding, because psychological distress was expected to create self-doubt and to lower self-efficacy in general (Wood & Bandura, 1989). More interesting, a direct, positive relationship between psychological distress and career search success was also observed, although the explanation for this relationship could not be explained clearly.

These studies suggest that career search self-efficacy and psychological distress are closely related to how individuals handle career search tasks, and, yet, these constructs seem to be independent of each other. High career search self-efficacy consistently predicts positive career search behaviors and outcome, whereas the role of psychological distress in relation to career search self-efficacy and outcome appears to be more complicated. Generally, psychological distress is associated with negative career search outcome, whether that distress is a cause or result of unsuccessful career search; psychological distress is hypothetically expected to be related to low career search self-efficacy. However, Crossley and Stanton's (2005) study indicated that it is the more stable, traitlike negative affect that is mediated by career search self-efficacy, whereas psychological distress itself may have a direct positive relationship with successful career search outcome.

These findings suggest that certain conditions may exist that could help explain the inconsistency in the pattern of career search self-efficacy and psychological distress. For example, is there a certain condition wherein individuals with strong career search self-efficacy can still experience intense psychological distress? Or, is there a situation wherein career search self-efficacy is totally unrelated to psychological distress? Moreover, previous studies have not been concerned with specific types of career search self-efficacy or psychological distress. As stated earlier, recent attempts to investigate self-efficacy for different career search activities supports the need to understand specific types of career search self-efficacy. This also applies to psychological distress. Although depression and anxiety, which commonly indicate the existence of psychological distress, share the presence of negative affect, depression focuses on self-criticism and pessimism; anxiety, on the other hand, is oriented toward the perceived threat and potential harm (Beck et al., 2001).

These questions served as the basis for our investigation of individuals' perceptions of career transitions in relation to specific types of career search self-efficacy and psychological distress. We used Schlossberg, Waters, and Goodman's (1995) definition of a career transition as "any event, or non-event, that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions, and roles" (p. 27). Our focus was on two aspects of the college students' perceptions of the career transitions: strength (psychological resources in the career transition) and direction (regulatory focus) of their approaches to the career transitions.

Psychological resources in the career transition are the perceived resources and barriers that illustrate self-appraisal of the adaptation to the career transition (Heppner, 1991). Heppner identified five psychological resources--`readiness, confidence, control, support, and decision independence. Readiness represents the perceived motivation to progress in the career transition; confidence reflects self-efficacy related to successful career transition. Control, the third psychological resource, reflects the individual's perceived control over the career transition. The fourth psychological resource, support, represents available social support for the successful career transition. Finally, decision independence indicates a personal perception of autonomy in the career transition decision.

A study by Heppner, Multon, and Johnston (1994) showed that these psychological resources were closely related to individuals' experiences in their career transitions. Overall, individuals with greater psychological resources experienced less stress, made more progress in their career transitions, and had a clearer vocational identity. The specific psychological resources were related to individuals' experiences in their career transitions in distinctive ways. Specifically, greater readiness, confidence, control, and support were related to individuals' perceptions that they were making more progress in their transitions and that they had clearer vocational identities, whereas decision independence was not related. This result may indicate that independent decision making in the career transition may be both an asset and a deficit, depending on one's situation. More important, greater stress was closely related to less confidence, control, and support, not to readiness and decision independence.

Unfortunately, few studies have investigated the relationships between psychological resources and career search self-efficacy or psychological distress (except stress). However, as the previously discussed results (Heppner et al., 1994) showed, psychological resources can generate differences in how individuals perceive the career transition and how specific resources contribute to the process. Thus, it can be assumed that overall psychological resources, and each of them alone, may create individual differences in career search self-efficacy and psychological distress of graduating college seniors.