The Analysis of a Causal Relationship between Career Maturity and Academic Achievement on Korean Adolescents Using Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling

Academic achievement and career maturity are closely related, but an understanding of the causal direction is lacking. The purpose of this study was to analyze the causal relationship between career maturity and academic achievement using autoregressive cross-lagged modeling. This study analyzed the data of 888 adolescents (mean age = 15.90) from the Youth Panel Survey. Autoregressive modeling indicates that academic achievement and career maturity remained stable over time. Higher academic achievement at a previous time point was associated with higher academic achievement at the next time point and similarly for career maturity. Moreover, as a result of cross-lagged effects, academic achievement at one time had a positive effect on career maturity at the next time point, while career maturity at one time had a positive impact on academic achievement at the next time point. In other words, there was a bidirectional effect between academic achievement and career maturity. This study implies that researchers and educators should consider career maturity as well as academic achievement for career guidance.