Family socioeconomic status predicts adolescents' career adaptability through their self-efficacy on career goal setting and exploration: Testing the moderating roles of relationship quality with teachers, parents, and peers.

Abstract

Family socioeconomic status (SES) is one key antecedent of adolescents' career adaptability; understanding the mechanisms through which family SES influences career outcomes is thus essential. Grounded in the career self-management model, this study leveraged three-wave data from a sample of 3,196 Chinese adolescents (15.56 ± .58 years old; 52.72% girls) to examine the potential mediating roles of adolescents' self-efficacy on career goal setting and exploration in the association between family SES and adolescents' career adaptability and also test the potential moderating roles of adolescents' relationship quality with various important others (i.e., parents, teachers, and peers) in such associations. Results demonstrated that family SES (Wave 1) was positively associated with adolescents' career adaptability (Wave 3, controlling for the baseline) via positive associations with both adolescents' self-efficacy on career goal setting and exploration (Wave 2, controlling for the baseline). Moreover, relationship quality with parents (Wave 1) and teachers (Wave 1) bolstered the positive association between family SES (Wave 1) and adolescents' career goal-setting self-efficacy (Wave 2). Ultimately, the indirect effect involving career goal-setting self-efficacy was stronger when adolescents had higher (vs. lower) relationship quality with teachers. Implications for research and practice were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).