Retiring or rewiring? Test of a social cognitive model of retirement planning.

Using the social cognitive model of career self-management (CSM; Lent & Brown, 2013), we examined theory-based predictors of retirement planning goals, decisional anxiety, and level of decidedness. Participants were 525 older workers in the United States and Canada. We first examined the psychometric properties of new or revised social cognitive measures linked to retirement planning with part of the sample ( = 200) and then tested the stability of the factor structure with the remainder of the sample ( = 325).

Viewing the Career Indecision Profile within a theoretical context: Application of the social cognitive career self-management model.

The Career Indecision Profile (CIP; Brown et al., 2012) is an empirically derived measure tapping common sources of career indecision: interpersonal conflict, neuroticism/negative affect, lack of readiness, and choice/commitment anxiety. We adapted the social cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013) to provide a theoretical structure for these sources of indecision, focusing on how they interrelate and jointly predict career decision progress.

Social-cognitive predictors of career exploration and decision-making: Longitudinal test of the career self-management model.

We tested the social-cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013) using a longitudinal design. Participants were 420 college students who completed measures of career exploration and decision-making self-efficacy, outcome expectations, social support, goals, and actions, along with trait conscientiousness, at 2 time points roughly 4 months apart, near the beginning and middle of an academic year. They also reported their level of career decidedness and decisional anxiety at both of these time points as well as near the end of the academic year (about 3 months after the 2nd assessment).

Predictors of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics choice options: A meta-analytic path analysis of the social-cognitive choice model by gender and race/ethnicity.

We tested the interest and choice portion of social-cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains. Data from 143 studies (including 196 independent samples) conducted over a 30-year period (1983 through 2013) were subjected to meta-analytic path analyses. The interest/choice model was found to fit the data well over all samples as well as within samples composed primarily of women and men and racial/ethnic minority and majority persons.

Prediction of job search intentions and behaviors: Testing the social cognitive model of career self-management.

We present 2 studies testing the recently developed social-cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013) in the context of the job search process. In the first study, a sample of 243 unemployed job seekers completed measures of job search self-efficacy, outcome expectations, social support, search intentions, conscientiousness, and perceived control (or volition) over the outcomes of the job search. The latter variable was added to the social-cognitive model to examine the possibility, derived from the psychology of working perspective, that perceived volition might moderate the relation of self-efficacy to job search intentions.