中華心理衛生協會

 Purpose: Career construction theory (CCT) is a developmental theory that emphasizes how individuals construct their vocational identity, build career stories, and assign meaning to their work. From this perspective, career adaptability has a role in managing developmental transitions, which are particularly important in adolescence. Given that social interest is a key indicator of psychological health, we tested a conceptual model in which social interest mediates the relationship between career adaptability and social-emotional health. Our goal was to validate an integrative framework that captures both career and emotional dimensions of adolescent development. Methods: We administered a survey to adolescents in Taiwan and obtained 3,330 valid responses to our pre-test and survey. We conducted exploratory factor analysis on the pre-test results and validated our proposed model with the survey results using confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, variance analysis, and structure equation modeling with career adaptability, social interest, and social-emotional health as the main measurement variables. Results: We identified a significant positive correlation between career adaptability and social-emotional health, a significant positive correlation between social interest and social-emotional health, and a significant positive correlation between career adaptability and social interest. Conclusions: These results indicate that social interest plays a critical mediating role between career adaptability and social-emotional health. When career adaptability is paired with interpersonal belonging in the form of social interest, it corresponds to better psychological health. The findings extend the applicability of career construction theory.