Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to develop and to examine the model validity of the causal
model of career success for cooperative education graduates with the empirical data. The research
samples consisted of 1,861 Suranaree University of Technology (SUT)s cooperative education graduates
from batch 1 to batch 20. Questionnaires were utilized for the data collection. Data were analyzed by
using descriptive statistics and structural equation model. The major findings were as follows: 1) the
causal model of career success for cooperative education graduates consisted of 1 endogenous latent
variable: career success, and 4 exogenous latent variables: perceived self-efficacy, cooperative
education experience, organizational support, and work-family balance; and 2) the causal model of
career success for cooperative education graduates had a good fit to the empirical data (x2=15.01,
df=15, p=.45, x2/df=1.00, GFI=1.00, RMSEA=.00, RMR=.00, NFI=1.00, RFI=1.00, GFI=1.00). Organizational
support, perceived self-efficacy, and cooperative education experience had a direct effects on the
career success at the significant levels of .01, .01, and .05, respectively, along with the positive effect
sizes of .66, .31, and .05, respectively. All of the causal variables in the model accounted for 77 percent of the
variance in career success."