The Causal Model of Career Success for Cooperative Education Graduates

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to develop and to examine the model validity of the causal model of career success for cooperative education graduates with the empirical data. The research samples consisted of 1,861 Suranaree University of Technology (SUT)’s cooperative education graduates from batch 1 to batch 20. Questionnaires were utilized for the data collection. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and structural equation model. The major findings were as follows: 1) the causal model of career success for cooperative education graduates consisted of 1 endogenous latent variable: career success, and 4 exogenous latent variables: perceived self-efficacy, cooperative education experience, organizational support, and work-family balance; and 2) the causal model of career success for cooperative education graduates had a good fit to the empirical data (2=15.01, df=15, p=.45, x2/df=1.00, GFI=1.00, RMSEA=.00, RMR=.00, NFI=1.00, RFI=1.00, GFI=1.00). Organizational support, perceived self-efficacy, and cooperative education experience had a direct effects on the career success at the significant levels of .01, .01, and .05, respectively, along with the positive effect sizes of .66, .31, and .05, respectively. All of the causal variables in the model accounted for 77% of the variance in career success.