Research on career adaptability is one of the most significant discoveries in occupational psychology during the past three decades (Nye et al., 2017), which has been further developed The notion of career adaptability has been embraced by scholars in the career area, as seen by the growing number of studies published on the topic over the past several years (Johnston, 2016).

At the same time, with the quick iteration and update of the technology, the fast and rapid growth of society, and the regularly changing conditions of life and work, individual flexibility and adaptation have become extremely important and are seen as a prerequisite for success (Sullivan and Baruch, 2009;Johnston, 2016). The idea of career adaptability is commonly seen as an essential resource for effective career development, good responses to career obstacles, and the increase of individual satisfaction (Zacher, 2014; Chan and Mai, 2015; Johnston et al., 2015; Johnston, 2016). Faced with the terrible worldwide impact of COVID-19, people’s everyday lives and careers have been significantly damaged, with ominous consequences for their futures (Akkermans et al., 2020). The existence of unemployment is pervasive, and the number of empty new roles is decreasing. The diminishing employment market has a significant effect on individual careers, particularly those of college students (ILO, 2020). Therefore, a rapid grasp of individual career adaptability in the early stages of one’s career should be of great assistance to the career counseling of university faculty to students and the career guidance of new workers in a variety of firm divisions. This is a win-win situation for early-career individuals, colleges, and associated businesses.

At present, there are now two comparable studies in China. One of the studies was conducted primarily among Macao employees who just graduated from the same public university (Sou et al., 2020), and hence their adaptability to the vocation is fairly limited. The second research focused on students from four universities and several limited industries including government, manufacturing, information technology, and service (Yu et al., 2019). Consequently, the representativeness of the study population is limited. The study aims to expand the diversity of the study groups in order to make results more representative for career development guidance. Considering that there are certain differences between China and other countries and regions in student origin region, college classification and specialty setting, it is hoped to explore the equivalence of these demographic factors in measuring career adaptability in the study.

Career adaptability is a concept conceptualized by Super, an American career planning master, revises his career maturity theory. Based on the classic understanding of individual variations in vocations, Super added the perspective of career development. In his career development theory proposed in 1955, Super first utilized the central notion of occupation maturity (Super, 1955). Then, in 1965, Crites established the concept of professional maturity, which supplanted this notion (Crites, 1974). Super and Knasel presented for the first time the notion of “career adaptability” after discovering that career maturity had significant limitations in understanding adult career growth (Super and Knasel, 1981). The concept of career maturity is gradually being replaced by the concept of career adaptability (Super et al., 1988). They believed that the concept of resilience highlighted the interaction between individuals and the environment and was more suitable for examining the career development of adults.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Pratzner (1978), Goodman (1994), Savickas (1997), and other researchers examined career adaptability and the significance of career adaptability in professional development concerns. On the basis of Super’s theoretical contributions, Savickas (1997) enhanced the theory of career adaptability from a career constructivist perspective. He thought that individuals were subjectively responsible for their own job progress. And they were able to actively investigate and build personal career tasks through career adaptation, which had four components: self-exploration, environmental exploration, career planning attitude, and career decision-making. Individual career adaptation is the capacity to successfully integrate individual career positions in order to attain career success. According to him, Super’s theory of career development would be more comprehensive if career adaptability were the central concept since career maturity emphasizes that individuals exist in a fixed environment, whereas career adaptability highlights the interaction with both individuals and their environment. Clearly, this concept is more in accordance with the requirements of the current era (Savickas, 1997).

Through a theory-evidence-theory method, Savickas has considered and studied career adaptability in a variety of ways and depth, and he has now created a more comprehensive theoretical framework: Career Construction Theory (CCT) (Savickas, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2013). Career adaptability is an essential component and fundamental notion of CCT theory (Johnston, 2016; Yu et al., 2019). Initially, according to the career maturity theory (Super and Knasel, 1981), Savickas investigated and presented a three-dimensional adaptive construct consisting of planful attitudes, self and environmental inquiry, and adaptive decision-making (Savickas, 1997). On the basis of the Social Cognitive Career Theory, Savickas subsequently added the dimension of Career confidence and changed it into a four-dimensional theoretical structure (Savickas, 2002; Savickas and Porfeli, 2011). In 2005, Savickas refined and enhanced the CCT theory of career adaptability, claiming that career adaptability develops along four dimensions, including career concern, career control, career curiosity, and career confidence. Among these, career concern refers to an individual’s interest in his or her future career development. Career control refers to the subjective initiative and liberty of the individual in pursuing future career development. Career curiosity refers to the active pursuit and modification of career self-cultivation and employment options during an individual’s career development, as opposed to passive development. Career confidence in one’s career refers to the fortitude and trust an individual has in overcoming obstacles and achieving career goals. Therefore, according to Savickas, career adaptability is a type of psychological resource that enables individuals to deal with and mobilize psychological energy when confronted with career responsibilities, issues, and changes, along with career crisis events during the career growth process (Savickas, 2005; Savickas and Porfeli, 2012).

Acceptance and expansion of the notion of career adaptability amongst researchers is a lengthy process. In the present research, career adaptability has received increasing attention, particularly in the widely utilized study on self-career management and individual career development.

Johnston (2016) uncovered eight primary instruments for evaluating career adaptability through a thorough assessment of the literature. CAAS (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012), CAAS-SF (Maggiori et al., 2015), CWAQ (Nota et al., 2012), CMI-Form C (Savickas and Porfeli, 2011), CAI (Ferreira, 2013; Ferreira et al., 2013), SCCI (Savickas, 2009), CFI (Rottinghaus et al., 2005) and the I-Adapt Scale (Ployhart and Bliese, 2006). CWAQ, CMI-Form C, CAI, and SCCI are mostly focused upon Savickas’ concept of career adaptability and attempt to quantify comparable or very similar characteristics. CFI and IAS are measured from different perspectives, but their applicability is limited (Johnston, 2016). The CAAS (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012) is the most widely used scale (Yu et al., 2019; Pal and Jena, 2021). The Career Adapt-Ability Scale (CAAS) is a cross-cultural international version created by Savickas and a worldwide research group comprised of professionals and scholars from 18 nations and regions. Every single of the dimensions of concern, control, curiosity, and confidence was measured with six questions, for a total of twenty-four questions (McMahon et al., 2012; Savickas and Porfeli, 2012). The CAAS scale has been tested in 13 countries and regions from Eastern and Western, as well as having survived the consistency test in a wide range of cultural situations, demonstrating its broad application (Chen et al., 2020).

Due to the pressures of school, life, and job, the shorter the questionnaire, the less burdensome it is to respond, and the greater the degree of completion (Işık et al., 2018). In particular, using a shorter scale allows researchers to evaluate the relationship between career flexibility and other research parameters concurrently (Maggiori et al., 2015; Pal and Jena, 2021). Therefore, a relatively compact and effective measurement device is necessary (Johnston, 2016; Yu et al., 2019). Additionally, a short scale is especially useful in large panel study or in survey investigating numerous aspects.

In this regard, Maggiori et al. (2015) produced a 12-item form of the CAAS-SF. In the last four years, validation studies on the application of CAAS-SF in some nations have determined that the 12-item CAAS-SF (Maggiori et al., 2015) has a strong correlation with the 24-item CAAS (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012). In Australia (Perera and McIlveen, 2017), Turkey (Işık et al., 2018), Switzerland (Urbanaviciute et al., 2019), China (Yu et al., 2019), Germany (Haenggli and Hirschi, 2020), and India (Pal and Jena, 2021), similar results were found in related studies, and both the reliability as well as the validity of the measure were good. In these studies, it was observed that although the scale was halved in size, the 12-item CAAS-SF displayed the same component structure and psychometric qualities as the 24-item variant. (Maggiori et al., 2015; Işık et al., 2018; Yu et al., 2019; Sou et al., 2020; Pal and Jena, 2021). The aim of this study was to validate the Chinese version of the 12-item CAAS in a large sample among early career stage of Chinese university graduates.

On the basis of the statistical analysis of the sample of Chinese university graduates in the early stages of their careers, it is possible to conclude that the findings of this study concur with those presented by Maggiori et al. (2015). Comparing the psychometric properties and factor structure of CAAS-SF to other worldwide samples from recent years reveals a high degree of similarity. In terms of data specifics, the Cronbach alpha coefficient indicated that each subscale’s coefficient value was greater than 0.8, and the total coefficient reached 0.94. Comparable to samples from other countries, the internal consistency of the total programme and the four sub-dimensions was strong in China’s usage of the CAAS-SF. In the meantime, the results of EFA’s main component analysis and CFA’s confirmatory analysis both corroborate the four-factor dimension structure of CAAS-SF and are compatible with the dimension structure of CAAS. Therefore, this study confirms the applicability and validity of the questionnaire among Chinese university graduates at their early career.

From the results of the confirmatory factor analysis of this sample data, the curiosity’s factor loading rated first (0.95), and the confidence’s factor loading ranked second (0.93), both of which were greater than those of concern (0.85) and control (0.89). The values of the four components are greater than those measured by the original CAAS-SF (2015), but their overall trend is consistent. This is also comparable with Sou’s research on recent graduates in Macao, China (Sou et al., 2020), with a higher degree of consistency to Sou’s research on size and trend. In contrast, Pal’s study in India revealed that curiosity was the least important of the four criteria. He speculated that this disparity may reflect divergent perspectives on competition, unemployment, and the intense pressure to find suitable employment (Pal and Jena, 2021). This may be mostly attributable to regional, cultural, economic, and other variables. This must be confirmed by other researches. These distinctions will also be the subject of future investigation.

There are further intriguing findings from the study. In terms of gender, for instance, the findings of this study differ from those of prior research conducted in China (e.g. Yu, 2008; Zhao and Guo, 2010; Hou et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2019). Throughout this study, the gender among Chinese university graduates at the beginning of their careers had no effect on their adaptability. However, according to the findings of Hou et al. (2012), Yu et al. (2019), and other researchers, males in China are perceived to be more versatile in their jobs than women. They believe this is related to conventional gender norms and typical gender labor distribution within China, where men were commonly viewed as bound to the workplace and women to domestic duties (Hou et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2019). This may be because, as a result of societal progress, women’s education and ability training have vastly improved, and their participation in the workplace and the level of attention have increased. In addition, there is no distinction between school type and adaptability to the workplace. Under the policy and direction of the national education department, schools at all levels place a greater emphasis on teaching and training in pertinent areas to increase students’ vocational adaptability. This is in relation to the cultivation of vocational adaptability.

In conclusion, CAAS-SF is appropriate in the Chinese setting. This research also provides assistance with the implementation of CAAS-SF in China’s early career stages and across a variety of occupational fields. Through the implementation of CAAS-SF, it will be easier and faster to comprehend the relationship between the professional adaptability of Chinese college graduates in their early career stage and other pertinent study variables.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by The Scientific Research Office of Communication University of China, Nanjing. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

SH and XX supervised the topic selection and research design. CS put forward the core point of this research and wrote the paper. HL was responsible for data collection and modifying the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This study was funded by the Philosophy and Social Science Research Project of Universities in Jiangsu Province, Project no. 2020SJB1184.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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