Life goals and proactive career behaviors: The mediating role of visions about the future and the moderating role of intolerance of uncertainty

Dominated by uncertainties, today’s work world pushed university students to exhibit proactive career behaviors. Thus, this created a need for more research conducted to determine the variables associated with proactive career behaviors, on the grounds that additional research may contribute to an increase in proactive career behaviors. In this context the study explored the mediating role of visions about the future and the moderating role of intolerance of uncertainty in the relationship between university students’ life goals and their proactive career behaviors. The study was carried out with 519 students (299 females and 220 males) studying at a university in the Eastern Mediterranean Region of Turkey. The Scale of Setting Life Goals with Respect to Positive Psychotherapy, the Visions about the Future Scale, the Career Engagement Scale, and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale were employed as data collection tools. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis, structural equation modeling methods, and regression analysis based on the bootstrap method. The correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between proactive career behaviors, life goals and visions about the future, and a negative relationship between proactive career behaviors and intolerance of uncertainty. Furthermore, the analyses put forth that visions about the future have a mediating role in the relationship between life goals and proactive career behaviors and that intolerance of uncertainty has a moderating role in the same relationship. Increasing university students’ life goals and their visions about the future and reducing their intolerance of uncertainty will help them exhibit proactive career behaviors.