How Career Hope and Career Social Support Affect College Students' Career Engagement: The Role of Planned Happenstance Skills

While hope and social support are recognised as key resources for college students' career development, the intricate mechanisms through which they jointly and dynamically influence career outcomes, and the critical role of proactive skills in translating these resources into action, remain insufficiently understood. This research programme systematically investigates these processes, integrating Hope Theory with the Planned Happenstance Theory. Across four studies using experimental, longitudinal and cross‐sectional methods, we demonstrate that career hope is a pivotal driver of career engagement (Study 1, N  = 175), but its impact is contingent upon individuals' planned happenstance skills (Study 2, N  = 172). Critically, our longitudinal data (Study 3, N  = 320) revealed a virtuous cycle: career social support and career hope reciprocally mediate each other's positive relationship with engagement. A final confirmatory study (Study 4, N  = 321) validated this complex network, showing that the mediating pathways are amplified when students possess high levels of planned happenstance skills. Collectively, these findings not only extend Hope Theory into the career domain but, more importantly, integrate it with Planned Happenstance Theory, revealing how internal agency (career hope) and external resources (career social support) interact with proactive skills (planned happenstance skills) to shape career engagement. This research provides a robust, multimethod foundation for designing targeted interventions to improve student career outcomes.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  European Journal of Education

• Publication date

  2025-11-04

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/ejed.70314
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Linking Career-Related Social Support to Job Search Behavior Among College Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

  2025cited by this paper
• Social Class and Career Decision Self-Efficacy: Roles of Career Social Support and Birthplace

  2025cited by this paper
• The Mediating Effect of Planned Happenstance Skills in the Relationship between Career Barriers and Career Adaptability among Junior College Students

  2025cited by this paper
• Exploring the Role of Planned Happenstance Skills in Shaping Career Adaptability Among High School Students

  2025cited by this paper
• The relationship between career-related social support and self-perceived employability: the chain mediating role of psychological capital and career adaptability

  2024cited by this paper
• The impact of mentoring in higher education on student career development: a systematic review and research agenda

  2024cited by this paper
• Effect of perceived social support on career expectations of vocational college students in China: the chain mediating roles of self-efficacy and professional identity

  2024cited by this paper
• Hope across cultures

  2023cited by this paper
• Secondary Students’ Academic Engagement Through Career Construction: The Role of Parental Support and Career Hope

  2023cited by this paper
• Linking Future Decent Work Perceptions With Employment Anxiety: A Psychology of Working Perspective

  2023cited by this paper
• Career development: A balance of opportunities and choices

  2023cited by this paper
• Addressing Compassion Fatigue Using Career Engagement and the Hope-Centered 

Model for Career Development

  2023cited by this paper
• School belonging and hope among at‐risk youth: The contribution of academic support provided by youths' social support networks

  2022cited by this paper
• Career adaptability as a mediator between social capital and career engagement

  2022cited by this paper
• Moderation analysis for longitudinal data

  2022cited by this paper
• Life goals and proactive career behaviors: The mediating role of visions about the future and the moderating role of intolerance of uncertainty

  2022cited by this paper
• The effect of psychological capital on performance through the role of career engagement: Evidence from Indonesian public organizations

  2021cited by this paper
• Career-related teacher support: A review of roles that teachers play in supporting students’ career planning

  2020cited by this paper
• Investigating the impact of the time interval selection on autoregressive mediation modeling: Result interpretations, effect reporting, and temporal designs.

  2020cited by this paper
• The Relationship Between Career Social Support and Employability of College Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

  2020cited by this paper
• The influence of perceived social support on hope: A longitudinal study of older-aged adolescents in China

  2020cited by this paper
• Using positive psychology interventions to strengthen family happiness: A family systems approach

  2020cited by this paper
• Addressing common method variance and endogeneity in vocational behavior research: A review of the literature and suggestions for future research

  2020cited by this paper
• The Planned Happenstance Career Inventory: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison

  2019cited by this paper
• Planned Happenstance Skills as Personal Resources for Students’ Psychological Wellbeing and Academic Adjustment

  2019cited by this paper
• The effect of a career development programme based on the Hope-Action Theory: Hope to Work for refugees in British Columbia

  2018cited by this paper
• Longitudinal Relationships Between Planned Happenstance Skills and Life Adjustment and the Moderating Role of Career Barriers

  2018cited by this paper
• China’s expansion of higher education: The labour market consequences of a supply shock

  2017cited by this paper
• The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade

  2016cited by this paper
• A Comparison of Strengths and Interests Protocols in Career Assessment and Counseling

  2016cited by this paper
• Career adaptability as a mediator between personality and career engagement

  2016cited by this paper
• Narcissism and career success: Occupational self-efficacy and career engagement as mediators

  2015cited by this paper
• The Effects of Hope on Student Engagement, Academic Performance, and Vocational Identity

  2015cited by this paper
• Hope as a resource for career exploration: Examining incremental and cross-lagged effects

  2015cited by this paper
• The Career Engagement Scale

  2014cited by this paper
• Mesleki Sonuç Beklentisinin Yordayıcıları Olarak Algılanan Sosyal Destek ve Denetim Odağı

  2013cited by this paper
• Career goal-related social ties during two educational transitions: Antecedents and consequences

  2010cited by this paper
• Culture and social support.

  2008cited by this paper
• G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences

  2007cited by this paper
• Fostering hope: a leader's first and last task

  2006cited by this paper
• PREDICTORS OF OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS: A META‐ANALYSIS

  2005cited by this paper
• Contributions of the relational context to career adaptability among urban adolescents.

  2005cited by this paper
• Hope Theory, Measurements, and Applications to School Psychology.

  2003cited by this paper
• Hopeful Choices: A School Counselor's Guide to Hope Theory

  2002cited by this paper
• Preferences of High- and Low-hope People for Self-referential Input

  1998cited by this paper
• Toward a Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and Academic Interest, Choice, and Performance

  1994cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.