Career doubt in a dual-domain model of coping and progress for university students' academic and career goals

University students set career goals during their academic journey in order to facilitate their transition to the labor market. Career goals can nonetheless be accompanied by doubt, even among the most determined students. The purpose of this study (N = 234) was to investigate the role of career doubt on the progress made by university students in the simultaneous pursuit of their academic and career goals. We examined the mediating role of academic and career coping strategies in the relationship between career doubt and academic and career goal progress. The results from structural equation modeling revealed a significant indirect effect for task-oriented coping in the relationships between career doubt and both career progress and academic progress. Overall, these results clarify the mechanisms by which university students pursue their goals as a preliminary effort to inform practitioners about the role of coping to better prepare students for a successful transition to the labor market

Can Bayesian Confirmatory Factor Analyses Help Recover the Hierarchical Structure of Coping?

A pervasive problem in the coping literature has been the tendency for traditional confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to reject hierarchical models of coping. In this study, we examined the first-order and hierarchical factor structure of the Coping Inventory for Academic Strivings with two independent samples of students. Results of traditional CFA again revealed the inferiority of the hierarchical model. Using Bayesian estimation, we present a more flexible statistical approach from which the cumulation of small cross-loadings appeared to be responsible for poor fit, yet inconsequential for the first-order structure of coping strategies and their organization in distinct higher-order dimensions. Results of multiple regression analyses further indicated that the two coping dimensions have their own nomological network, thus providing support for their criterion validity. Overall, our findings suggest that many more coping questionnaires may be salvaged and reintroduced in the coping literature after unleashing the inherent complexities of the coping construct