Student Veteran Career Transition Readiness, Career Adaptability, and Academic and Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Student military veterans pursuing higher education present with unique career development needs. To better understand these needs, the authors conducted an exploratory study to examine career transition readiness, career adaptability, academic satisfaction, and satisfaction with life among 134 student military veterans (34 women, 100 men). Results indicated statistically significant positive correlations between satisfaction with life scores and scores on measures of career transition readiness and career adaptability. Regression results demonstrated that career transition readiness and career adaptability predicted satisfaction with life, but not academic satisfaction. The findings suggest a need to understand the complexity of student veterans’ career and academic development in both research and practice.

Courage, Career Adaptability, and Readiness as Resources to Improve Well-Being during the University-to-Work Transition in Italy

“…Finally, readiness is positively associated with satisfaction [ 73 ] and optimism [ 74 , 75 ] and negatively associated with psychological distress [ 76 ]. Some studies specifically focused on career transition readiness in college students showed that career adaptability was among its predictors [ 77 ] and there are positive correlations between, career readiness, career adaptability, and satisfaction with life [ 78 ]. In the university context, it seems that one of the most important factors associated with the decrease in self-efficacy in a career search and the increase in psychological distress is the reduction of certain psychological resources such as readiness, confidence, and support in a career transition [ 79 ].…”

Student Veterans: Meaning in Life, Negative Career Thoughts, and Depression

“…Given that the CTI total score emerged as a strong predictor of scores on the MLQ-P subscale, researchers may want to explore this finding in greater depth by examining the CTI subscales, that is, Decision-Making Confusion, Commitment Anxiety, and External Conflict, and their relationship to the presence of meaning in a student veteran's life. On the basis of this study's findings and other recent studies (e.g., Blackburn & Owens, 2015;Ghosh et al, 2019), it may be useful to explore how other career readiness (e.g., career adaptability, self-efficacy) and selfassessment (e.g., differentiation, values) constructs are related to meaning and purpose in student veterans' lives. The Career Transitions Inventory (Heppner, 1998) could be used to investigate how student veterans experience life transitions in relation to other career development and mental health factors.…”

“…Interventions aimed at targeting negative career thoughts and depressive symptomatology may enhance student veterans' self‐report of meaning and purpose in their lives. Having conversations about how student veterans' view the concepts of meaning and purpose in their lives may also be useful, in addition to assessing for depressive symptomatology and protective factors such as life satisfaction (Ghosh et al, 2019), satisfaction with work, intimate relationships, nonfamily relationships, and leisure activities (Bryan et al, 2013).…”

“…The increase in numbers is partly related to passage of the Post‐9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Act of 2008 (Sander, 2012), which provides an opportunity for veterans to pursue their career aspirations through higher education (Rumann & Hamrick, 2009). In addition to being a growing population on college campuses, some student veterans may experience various challenges in transitioning from a military setting to higher education, including adjusting to college life (Umucu, 2017), coping with mental health concerns (e.g., anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder), and finding meaning and purpose in their lives outside of the military (Ackerman et al, 2009; Campbell & Riggs, 2015; Doenges, 2011; Ghosh et al, 2019; Romero et al, 2015). We examined negative career thoughts and depression as two variables that might influence meaning and purpose in the lives of student veterans.…”

Does Practice Enhance Adaptability? The Role of Personality Trait, Supervisor Behavior, and Career Development Training

“…Career adaptability (CA), a central construct of career construction theory ( Savickas, 2002 ; Savickas et al, 2009 ), represents individuals’ psychosocial resources that help one to fit environmental change ( Savickas, 1997 ). Indeed, CA has been shown empirically to be a significant and universally valid factor that enables individuals to facilitate psychological adjustment and achieve adaptation goals (e.g., Guan et al, 2013 ; Fiori et al, 2015 ; Hirschi et al, 2015 ; Ghosh et al, 2019 ; Urbanaviciute et al, 2019 ), thus emerging vocational research on career construction theory has started to explore the drivers of CA ( Coetzee and Harry, 2013 ; Zacher, 2014 ; Shin and Lee, 2016 ; Autin et al, 2017 ; Obschonka et al, 2018 ; Pajic et al, 2018 ).…”