Measuring Career Adaptability in a Sample of Italian University Students: Psychometric Properties and Relations with the Age, Gender, and STEM/No STEM Courses

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript aims to verify the psychometric properties of the tool for measuring the career adaptability. The focus of the study is relevant and valuable in the context of current labor circumstances.

The introduction is well done, providing the basic explanation of crucial terms. The author used plenty of relevant theorethical and empirical sources what contributes the manuscript well. I recommend to change the levels of sub-chapters (from 2nd to 3rd) in the introduction sections, it is confusing at some places and difficult to follow.

The study is about psychometric properties of Italian version of the instrument. The variables are well described, but information about original version of the tool, its authors and development are absent. Also, are there any other language variations of the tool? Please, add mentioned information.

In the empirical part of the study (and also in the title of the article), STEM/no STEM courses are mentioned. There are missing information in the introduction, why it should be relevant variable. I find it to be important to add this information. Why authors assumed any differences between STEM and no STEM groups? What is the background? There are only age and gender explained as relevant variables.

Procedure – please add detailed description of the tool, it is not suffiscient in the present form.

In the Procedure/Results there are missing information:

• How was the normality of data distribution assessed?
• Did data meet the assumptions for PCA and CFA? Please, add information about relevant indicators.

In discussion, author claim that concurrent validity was confirmed. However I did not find any evidences about it. Concurrent validity „measures how well a new test compares to an well-established test....“. However, the author did not use any instrument for comparison. How was the concurrent validity assessed?

I find practical implications to be vague and not specific. The author recommends interventions and trainings on different levels (individual/group/organizational), but specific suggestions are missing.  Based on the instrument, which skills should be supported?

Author Response

Dear Editor, Dear Reviewers,

Thank you very much for your email of September 9th 2021 in which you invite us to respond to the reviewers’ comments and to revise our manuscript titled “Measuring Career Adaptability in a Sample of Italian University Students: Psychometric Properties and Relations with the Age, Gender, and STEM/no STEM Courses”.

We very much appreciate the feedback and guidance that the reviewers provided us. As you will see, we have addressed all the comments and suggestions and have made the changes requested.

We wish to thank you again for your precious help. Detailed descriptions of the changes that have been made appear below and in the manuscript in which all the changes are in review mode.

 

Best regards,

The Authors

 

Reviewer 1

R1: The manuscript aims to verify the psychometric properties of the tool for measuring the career adaptability. The focus of the study is relevant and valuable in the context of current labor circumstances. The introduction is well done, providing the basic explanation of crucial terms. The author used plenty of relevant theoretical and empirical sources what contributes the manuscript well. I recommend to change the levels of sub-chapters (from 2nd to 3rd) in the introduction sections, it is confusing at some places and difficult to follow.

As: Thanks for the suggestion, we've changed the order of the sub-paragraphs. We hope that in this way the reading will be clearer.

R1: The study is about psychometric properties of Italian version of the instrument. The variables are well described, but information about original version of the tool, its authors and development are absent. Also, are there any other language variations of the tool? Please, add mentioned information.

As: Thanks for the suggestions offered. We have made changes according to the suggestions. In the revised manuscript, we have tried to improve on these critical points.

R1: In the empirical part of the study (and also in the title of the article), STEM/no STEM courses are mentioned. There are missing information in the introduction, why it should be relevant variable. I find it to be important to add this information. Why authors assumed any differences between STEM and no STEM groups? What is the background? There are only age and gender explained as relevant variables.

As: Thank you very much for your precise suggestion. We added missing information about the STEM no STEM variable in the introduction.

R1: Procedure – please add detailed description of the tool, it is not sufficient in the present form. In the Procedure/Results there are missing information: How was the normality of data distribution assessed? Did data meet the assumptions for PCA and CFA? Please, add information about relevant indicators.

A2: We are grateful for the useful comments and for the specific recommendations. In the revised version of the paper, we clarify these relevant aspects.

R1: In discussion, author claim that concurrent validity was confirmed. However I did not find any evidences about it. Concurrent validity „measures how well a new test compares to an well-established test....“. However, the author did not use any instrument for comparison. How was the concurrent validity assessed?

As: We would like to thank the referee for allowing us to clarify this important aspect. We referred to concurrent validity as an assessment of the consistency of the measure with an immediately observable behavior or event (e.g., in our case, classically, with the average mark of examinations carried out at the university) (Chiorri 2020; Guinion and Cranny 1982; Cronbach and Meehl 1955).

R1: I find practical implications to be vague and not specific. The author recommends interventions and trainings on different levels (individual/group/organizational), but specific suggestions are missing. Based on the instrument, which skills should be supported?

As: Thanks for the suggestions. We tried to be more specific and less vague. In the manuscript you can find the parts we have added. We hope we have answered your question.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The work appears well organized and the topic is potentially interesting for the journal.
In order to make the article ready for publication, I suggest to the author's minor revisions in the hope that they may be helpful in increasing the quality of the article:
- At the end of the introduction, include a section on the goal of the study where explicitly the hypotheses for the two studies will be outlined.
- Insert the procedure by which participants were involved and reference to the ethical standards that were followed for the study, any informed consent required, etc.

This study presents the psychometric properties of the construct of Career Ability measured through Proactive Personality and Boundaryless Mindset as proxy variables in a sample of 579 adults enrolled at the University of Cagliari (Italy), or recently graduated therein. 

The text is clear and easy to read. They address the main question posed and the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments.

Author Response

Dear Editor, Dear Reviewers,

Thank you very much for your email of September 9th 2021 in which you invite us to respond to the reviewers’ comments and to revise our manuscript titled “Measuring Career Adaptability in a Sample of Italian University Students: Psychometric Properties and Relations with the Age, Gender, and STEM/no STEM Courses”.

We very much appreciate the feedback and guidance that the reviewers provided us. As you will see, we have addressed all the comments and suggestions and have made the changes requested.

We wish to thank you again for your precious help. Detailed descriptions of the changes that have been made appear below and in the manuscript in which all the changes are in review mode.

 

Best regards,

The Authors

 

Reviewer 2

R2: The work appears well organized and the topic is potentially interesting for the journal. In order to make the article ready for publication, I suggest to the author's minor revisions in the hope that they may be helpful in increasing the quality of the article: At the end of the introduction, include a section on the goal of the study where explicitly the hypotheses for the two studies will be outlined.

As: Thanks for your suggestions. In the manuscript we reported what the purpose of the study is: Considering the potential importance of Career Adaptability measured through Proactive Personality and Boundaryless Mindset as proxy variables (Mcardle et al. 2007), the purpose of this paper was to explore the psychometric features of the Italian version of the instrument in a sample of young adults, not yet employed, looking for professional integration, in the context of recent developments in the international labor market. Therefore, the study aims to assess the factorial structure of the items and to evaluate their multigroup invariance, regarding the gender variable (Byrne 2001; 2004; 2008; 2013). Moreover, concurrent validity and criterion validity were assessed.

The two studies have a methodological value to assess the factorial structure of the items and for evaluating their multi-group invariance.

R2: Insert the procedure by which participants were involved and reference to the ethical standards that were followed for the study, any informed consent required, etc.

As: Thank you so much for your suggestion. We added to the manuscript the procedure by which the participants were involved, while references to ethical standards and informed consent were already present in the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All my recommendations and requests have been implemented.