Do the factors that help students attain desirable outcomes in university transfer to help them attain desirable outcomes upon work entry? The overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine the role of coping in helping university students and recent graduates maintain positive levels of achievement and psychological adjustment during the short- and long-term pursuit of their academic and career goals. Based on the extant literature on stress and coping, three studies document the achievement and psychological adjustment of young adults along theoretically relevant time points in their academic and career development. Study 1 builds on prior findings from Chamandy and Gaudreau (2019) by bridging the academic and career strivings of 550 university students across two examination periods to consider the domain specificity and changing nature of the coping process. We first examined the contemporaneous interplay between perceived control, coping, goal progress, and burnout in both the academic and career domains. We then examined if these patterns translated at the longitudinal level. Results indicated that earlier coping predicted change in goal progress, but not in burnout, in both domains. In the career domain, earlier goal progress also predicted change in task-oriented coping, thus revealing a bidirectional effect. No cross-domain effects were supported. Overall, the associations between coping, goal progress, and burnout differed both within and across time and contexts. Study 2 re-examined these associations among employees who had recently gone through the transition to work. In a two-wave longitudinal study, a sample of 153 recent graduates completed measures of appraisal, coping, goal progress, satisfaction, and burnout while retrospectively assessing their past experiences as university students and their current experiences at work. Results indicated that task-oriented coping in school was related to greater change in goal progress and satisfaction from school to work, whereas disengagement-oriented coping was related to greater change in burnout and to lower change in satisfaction. In turn, change in task-oriented coping was related to lower work burnout, whereas change in disengagement-oriented coping was related to greater change in work burnout and to lower change in work satisfaction. The findings also revealed bidirectional effects across school and work. Finally, graduation grades were shown to be useful but insufficient for our understanding of successful adaptation in the workplace, thus proving new insights on the psychological mechanisms involved in both the successful transition from university to work and the short-term adaptation of recent graduates at work. Study 3 takes a novel perspective on the experience of university students by testing a coping intervention involving hypothetic impediments to the pursuit of their career goals. In a two-wave randomized controlled study, 275 university students completed measures of transition-related controllability appraisals and school-related coping, satisfaction, burnout, and goal progress. The experimental condition elicited self-regulatory benefits by demonstrating group differences in the growth, decline, and follow-up levels, as well as in some of the associations between the intercepts and slopes of controllability appraisals, coping, satisfaction, and burnout. These findings indicate that a coping intervention can improve students’ perception of the transition to work and promote a more positive university experience. This thesis provided new knowledge on the role of coping in offering an advantage to university students on the job market beyond its role in facilitating goal progress and psychological adjustment. Our work opens the door to a long-term research agenda deemed necessary for practitioners and administrators with regards to the role of coping processes in the lives of university students during and beyond their post-secondary education. As a whole, the current dissertation makes theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the coping and transition literature in social, educational, and organizational psychology.

L’objectif de ce travail est d’étudier les ressources psychologiques qui favorisent l’épanouissement pour une insertion professionnelle rapide. Nous avons mené une démarche comparative entre deux moments : en amont et en aval de la transition université-emploi. L’objectif étant de voir comment ces ressources se développent-elles tout au long de la transition. La recherche s’est déroulée en Tunisie. La population étudiée concerne les jeunes diplômés de l’enseignement supérieur qui se caractérisent par un faible taux d’employabilité et un fort taux de chômage. Ces étudiants poursuivent des études en Sciences Humaines et Sociales, en Lettres, en Sciences Economiques et en Droit. Deux groupes sont considérés dans cette population : un groupe d’étudiants en fin de parcours universitaire (en amont de la transition) et un groupe de diplômés en insertion professionnelle (en aval de la transition). Nous avons procédé à une méthodologie mixte articulant une étude qualitative exploratoire basée sur l’analyse de discours, et une étude quantitative. Nous avons procédé à la validation des outils de mesure psychométriques dans le contexte tunisien, tels que l’échelle d’épanouissement (Diener, 2010), l’échelle d’adaptabilité de carrière, version courte (CAAS-SF) (Maggiori, Rossier, & Savickas, 2017), l’échelle de « connaissance de ses forces » (Govindji & Linley, 2007) et l’Inventaire des forces de caractère (VIA-72). Des analyses de corrélation, de régression linéaire et hiérarchique et une modélisation par équation structurelle par la méthode PLS ont été conduites. Les résultats des deux études révèlent que l’épanouissement joue un rôle considérable dans le développement de l’adaptabilité de carrière et dans une insertion professionnelle rapide. Les ressources psychologiques sont mobilisées différemment en amont et en aval de la transition. Les forces de l’optimisme agissent positivement en amont de la transition. Les forces de la sagesse, les forces de la tempérance et le comportement proactif favorisent une insertion professionnelle rapide. En prenant appui à la fois sur ces résultats et sur la revue de la littérature, nous proposons des actions à mener au niveau institutionnel pour promouvoir l’épanouissement et le comportement proactif au sein des structures universitaires. Nous discutons l’élaboration de dispositifs d’appui à la transition université-emploi dans le cadre d’une collaboration régionale méditerranéenne transculturelle et multidisciplinaire. / The purpose of this work is to study the psychological resources that promote the development for fast reemployment. We applied a comparative approach between two phases: the before and after of University to Work Transition (STWT). The goal is to see how these resources develop throughout the transition. The research took place in Tunisia. Our study focuses on young gradudates of higher education suffering from low employability and high unemployment rate that complicates their reemployment. These students pursue studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Literature, Economics, and Law. Two groups are considered: A group of students at the end of their university studies (before the transition) and a group of graduates in a reemployment period (after the transition). We made use of a mixed methodology articulating an exploratory qualitative study based on discourse analysis, and a quantitative empirical study. We have validated psychometric scales in the Tunisian context, such as the scale of Flourishing (Diener, 2010), the scale of Career Adpatability Short Version (CAAS-SF) (Maggiori, Rossier, & Savickas, 2017), the "Strenghts Knowledge" scale (Govindji & Linley, 2007) and the Character Strengths Inventory (VIA-72). Correlation, linear and hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modeling using the PLS method were conducted. The results of both studies reveal that flourishing plays a significant role in developing career adaptability and rapid reemployment. Psychological resources are mobilized differently before and after the transition. The strengths of optimism contribute positively before the transition. The strenghts of wisdom, the temperance and proactive behavior promote rapid reemployment. Based on both results and the literature review, we propose a set of actions to be taken at the institutional level to promote the development and proactive behavior within academic structures. We discuss the development of support schemes for university-employment transition as part of a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary Mediterranean regional collaboration.

In the shift to a globalised creative economy where innovation and creativity are increasingly prized, many studies have documented direct and indirect social and economic benefits of the arts. In addition, arts workers have been argued to possess capabilities which are of great benefit both within and outside the arts, including (in addition to creativity) problem solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and team working skills (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2007). However, the labour force characteristics of professional artists in Australia and elsewhere belie their importance. The average earnings of workers in the arts sector are consistently less than other workers with similar educational backgrounds, and their rates of unemployment and underemployment are much higher (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005; Caves, 2000; Throsby & Hollister, 2003). Graduating students in the arts appear to experience similar employment challenges and exhibit similar patterns of work to artists in general. Many eventually obtain work unrelated to the arts or go back to university to complete further tertiary study in fields unrelated to arts (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2005a). Recent developments in career development theory have involved discussion of the rise of boundaryless careers amongst knowledge workers. Boundaryless careers are characterised by non-linear career progression occurring outside the bounds of a single organisation or field (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996a, 1996b). The protean career is an extreme form of the boundaryless career, where the careerist also possesses strong internal career motivations and criteria for success (Baruch, 2004; Hall, 2004; Hall & Mirvis, 1996). It involves a psychological contract with one's self rather than an organisation or organisations. The boundaryless and protean career literature suggests competencies and dispositions for career self-management and career success, but to date there has been minimal empirical work investigating the predictive value of these competencies and dispositions to career success in the boundaryless or protean career. This program of research employed competencies and dispositions from boundaryless and protean career theory to predict career success in professional artists and tertiary arts graduates. These competencies and dispositions were placed into context using individual and contextual career development influences suggested by the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a). Four substantive studies were conducted, using online surveys with professional artists and tertiary arts students / graduates, which were preceded by a pilot study for measure development. A largely quantitative approach to the program of research was preferred, in the interests of generalisability of findings. However, at the time of data collection, there were no quantitative measures available which addressed the constructs of interest. Brief scales of Career Management Competence based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (Haines, Scott, & Lincoln, 2003), Protean Career Success Orientation based on the underlying dispositions for career success suggested by protean career theory, and Career Development Influences based on the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) were constructed and validated via a process of pilot testing and exploratory factor analyses. This process was followed by confirmatory factor analyses with data collected from two samples: 310 professional artists, and 218 graduating arts students who participated at time 1 (i.e., at the point of undergraduate course completion in October, 2005). Confirmatory factor analyses via Structural Equation Modelling conducted in Study 1 revealed that the scales would benefit from some respecification, and so modifications were made to the measures to enhance their validity and reliability. The three scales modified and validated in Study 1 were then used in Studies 3 and 4 as potential predictors of career success for the two groups of artists under investigation, along with relevant sociodemographic variables. The aim of the Study 2 was to explore the construct of career success in the two groups of artists studied. Each participant responded to an open-ended question asking them to define career success. The responses for professional artists were content analysed using emergent coding with two coders. The codebook was later applied to the arts students' definitions. The majority of the themes could be grouped into four main categories: internal definitions; financial recognition definitions; contribution definitions; and non-financial recognition definitions. Only one third of the definition themes in the professional artists' and arts graduates' definitions of career success were categorised as relating to financial recognition. Responses within the financial recognition category also indicated that many of the artists aspired only to a regular subsistence level of arts income (although a small number of the arts graduates did aspire to fame and fortune). The second section of the study investigated the statistical relationships between the five different measures of career success for each career success definitional category and overall. The professional artists' and arts graduates' surveys contained several measures of career success, including total earnings over the previous 12 months, arts earnings over the previous 12 months, 1-6 self-rated total employability, 1-6 self-rated arts employability, and 1-6 self-rated self-defined career success. All of the measures were found to be statistically related to one another, but a very strong statistical relationship was identified between each employability measure and its corresponding earnings measure for both of the samples. Consequently, it was decided to include only the earnings measures (earnings from arts, and earnings overall) and the self-defined career success rating measure in the later studies. Study 3 used the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via Classification and Regression Tree (CART - Breiman, Friedman, Olshen, & Stone, 1984) style decision trees with v-fold crossvalidation pruning using the 1 SE rule. CART decision trees are a nonparametric analysis technique which can be used as an alternative to OLS or hierarchical regression in the case of data which violates parametric statistical assumptions. The three optimal decision trees for total earnings, arts earnings and self defined career success ratings explained a large proportion of the variance in their respective target variables (R2 between 0.49 and 0.68). The Career building subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, pertaining to the ability to manage the external aspects of a career, was the most consistent predictor of all three career success measures (and was the strongest predictor for two of the three trees), indicating the importance of the artists' abilities to secure work and build the external aspects of a career. Other important predictors included the Self management subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, Protean Career Success Orientation, length of time working in the arts, and the positive role of interpersonal influences, skills and abilities, and interests and beliefs from the Career Development Influences scale. Slightly different patterns of predictors were found for the three different career success measures. Study 4 also involved the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via CART style decision trees. This study used a prospective repeated measures design where the data for the attribute variables were gathered at the point of undergraduate course completion, and the target variables were measured one year later. Data from a total of 122 arts students were used, as 122 of the 218 students who responded to the survey at time 1 (October 2005) also responded at time 2 (October 2006). The resulting optimal decision trees had R2 values of between 0.33 and 0.46. The values were lower than those for the professional artists' decision trees, and the trees themselves were smaller, but the R2 values nonetheless indicated that the arts students' trees possessed satisfactory explanatory power. The arts graduates' Career building scores at time 1 were strongly predictive of all three career success measures at time 2, a similar finding to the professional artists' trees. A further similarity between the trees for the two samples was the strong statistical relationship between Career building, Self management, and Protean Career Success Orientation. However, the most important variable in the total earnings tree was arts discipline category. Technical / design arts graduates consistently earned more overall than arts graduates from other disciplines. Other key predictors in the arts graduates' trees were work experience in arts prior to course completion, positive interpersonal influences, and the positive influence of skills and abilities and interests and beliefs on career development. The research program findings represent significant contributions to existing knowledge about artists' career development and success, and also the transition from higher education to the world of work, with specific reference to arts and creative industries programs. It also has implications for theory relating to career success and protean / boundaryless careers.