The Causal Relationships among Career Education Satisfaction, Career Maturity, and Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy of Specialized and Meister High School Students: An AutoRegressive Cross-Lagged Model

This study investigates the longitudinal causal relationships among career education satisfaction, career maturity, and career decision-making self-efficacy among students in specialized and Meister high schools in Korea. Using data from the Korea Employment Education Panel II (KEEPⅡ), waves 1 (2016), 2 (2018), and 3 (2019), an Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Model (ARCL) was applied to examine temporal stability and reciprocal influences across variables. The analysis revealed significant autoregressive effects for all major constructs, indicating stable developmental trajectories. Cross-lagged results showed reciprocal and reinforcing effects between career maturity and career decision-making self-efficacy, while career education satisfaction positively predicted later career maturity but did not directly affect self-efficacy. Conversely, earlier self-efficacy increased subsequent satisfaction, suggesting a reverse feedback path. These findings highlight a dynamic and cyclical mechanism underlying vocational high school students’ career development. Practical implications include strengthening experience-based and student-centered career education, enhancing early success experiences to foster self-efficacy, and designing tailored programs aligned with students’ interests and abilities. Limitations related to the time span and available panel variables are discussed, and directions for future research using more recent or extended longitudinal data are recommended.