As the ability to flexibly adapt to the rapidly changing work environment is becoming more important, career adaptability is attracting attention in career education. The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that affect career adaptability of middle and high school students by applying a random forest technique that is robust to multicollinearity. For this purpose, the fourth wave data of the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey (KCYPS) 2018 were used. The main results are as follows. First, it was found that the major factors that commonly influence the career adaptability of middle and high school students were ‘academic helplessness’, ‘academic engagement’, ‘emotional problems’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘grit’, and ‘teacher relationship’. In particular, ‘academic helplessness’ was found to have the greatest impact on the career adaptability of middle and high school students and was shown to have a negative relationship with career adaptability. Second, excluding common factors, ‘parenting attitude’ and ‘cooperation’ were derived as the main influencing factors for middle school students. Third, ‘number of annual participation in career and vocational activities’, ‘peer relationship’, and ‘school life satisfaction’ were derived as the main influencing factors for high school students. Based on these results, implications for developing the career adaptability of middle and high school students were discussed.
급변하는 직업 환경에 유연하게 적응해나갈 수 있는 능력이 중요해짐에 따라 최근 진로교육에서 진로적응력이 주목받고 있다. 본 연구는 다중공선성에 강건한 랜덤 포레스트 기법을 적용하여 중·고등학생의 진로적응력에 영향을 미치는 요인을 탐색하는 데 목적이 있다. 이를 위해 한국아동·청소년패널조사(KCYPS) 2018의 4차년도 자료를 사용하였다. 주요 연구 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 중·고등학생의 진로적응력에 공통적으로 주요한 영향을 미치는 요인은 ‘학업무기력’, ‘학업열의’, ‘정서문제’, ‘자아존중감’, ‘그릿’, ‘교사와의 관계’로 나타났다. 특히, ‘학업무기력’은 중·고등학생의 진로적응력에 가장 큰 영향을 미치며, 진로적응력과 부적인 관계가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 공통 요인을 제외하고, 중학생 시기의 경우 ‘부모 양육태도’, ‘협동심’이 주요 영향 요인으로 도출되었다. 셋째, 고등학생 시기의 경우 ‘진로직업 활동 연간 참여 횟수’, ‘친구관계’, ‘학교생활 만족도’가 주요 영향 요인으로 도출되었다. 이러한 결과를 토대로 중·고등학생의 진로적응력 발달을 위한 다각적인 시사점을 논의하였다.