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The Effect of Proactive Personality on College Students’ Career Decision-Making Difficulties: Moderating and Mediating Effects

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Abstract

To investigate the influence of proactive personality on the process and difficulties of college students’ career decision-making, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 1540 college students. The results showed that (1) proactive personality significantly and negatively predicts college students’ career decision-making difficulties; (2) perceived social support moderates the relationship between proactive personality and college students’ career decision-making difficulties; (3) career decision-making self-efficacy mediates the influence of the interaction term between proactive personality and perceived social support on college students’ career decision-making difficulties. The practical implications of this study are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

ZH and YZ designed the study. ZR and YY collected the data. ZH, YZ, and FL wrote the manuscript. Sincere thanks are due to the Handing editor and anonymous reviewers for their professional and constructive comments. This study was founded by the Social science planning project of Jiangxi Province (19JY26) and Educational Science Planning Project of Jiangxi Province (19YB154).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, China

    Zhifang He & Yan Yang

  2. School of Education, Zunyi Normal College, Zunyi, China

    Yun Zhou

  3. Scientific Research Department, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, China

    Fei Li

  4. School of Physics and Communication Electronics, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China

    Zhiming Rao

  5. School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China

    Zhifang He

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  1. Zhifang He
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  2. Yun Zhou
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  5. Yan Yang
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Correspondence to Yun Zhou.

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He, Z., Zhou, Y., Li, F. et al. The Effect of Proactive Personality on College Students’ Career Decision-Making Difficulties: Moderating and Mediating Effects. J Adult Dev 28, 116–125 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-020-09359-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-020-09359-9

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