The Relationship Among the Six Vocational Identity Statuses and Five Dimensions of Planned Happenstance Career Skills

Abstract

The current study investigated how the five components of planned happenstance skills are related to vocational identity statuses. For determination of relationships, cluster and discriminant analyses were conducted sequentially on a sample of 515 university students in South Korea. Cluster analysis revealed vocational identity statuses to be divided into six meaningful groups, as the six-cluster model originally proposed by Porfeli, Lee, Vondracek, and Weigold: achieved, searching moratorium, moratorium, foreclosed, diffused, and undifferentiated. Moreover, discriminant analysis indicated that planned happenstance skills differentially discriminated the six vocational identity statuses. The more advanced vocational identity statuses (i.e., achieved and searching moratorium) had higher scores on the assessment of planned happenstance skills than their counterpart, the less advanced group (i.e., diffused and undifferentiated). Implications of the findings were discussed in the context of career counseling intervention (133 words).