The Relationship Between Career Engagement and Perceived Career Barriers of University Students: The Mediating Role of Career Adaptability and Career Planning Self-Efficacy

The aim of this study is to examine the multiple mediating role of career planning self-efficacy and career adaptability in the relationship between career barriers perceived by university students and their career engagement. The relationships between career engagement, career barriers, career planning self-efficacy, and career adaptability, which are the variables of the study, were tested and evaluated using the parallel multiple mediation method. The participants in the study were 357 university students. 243 of the participants were female (68%) and 114 were male (32%). The mean age of the participants was 20.75 years. Data from the study were collected using the Career Engagement Scale, the Career Barriers Scale, and the Career Adaptability Scale-Short Form. Data on career planning self-efficacy were obtained using items from the 'Ways of creating a career plan' sub-dimension of the Career Decision Making Self-Efficacy Scale. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and mediation analysis were used to analyse the data. The results obtained from the study reveal that the multiple mediating role of career adaptability and career planning self-efficacy in the relationship between perceived career barriers and career engagement is statistically significant. As a result of the specific indirect effect comparison conducted to determine which of the two mediating variables has a stronger mediating effect, it was found that there was no significant difference between career adaptability and career planning self-efficacy