Development and Validation of the Career Crafting Assessment (CCA)

This research introduces career crafting to describe a set of lifelong career behaviors that individuals engage in when developing their meaningful career paths. The Career Crafting Assessment (CCA), based on the defined criteria of career crafting, was developed to measure the construct and its validity was tested across two studies. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 revealed that the CCA is multidimensional, composed of four factors. Confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 further specified that the CCA is hierarchical, demonstrating a good model fit of a four-factor model with a higher-order factor. Correlational tests indicated that career crafting is positively related to existing career constructs, demonstrating convergent validity. Furthermore, the CCA predicted meaningful work, work engagement, and subjective career success, providing concurrent validity. Finally, a series of hierarchical regression tests revealed that career crafting accounts for more of the variance in meaningful work and work engagement than job crafting but not in subjective career success, partially providing incremental evidence. Overall, study findings suggest that (a) career crafting is a distinct construct, and (b) the CCA is a valid measure for assessing career crafting that can be used to better understand lifelong career behaviors to make one's career more meaningful and engaging.