11 topics among 7,591 employability research abstracts (1942–2024): a structural topic model and call for interdisciplinary perspectives
Article
Article Title | 11 topics among 7,591 employability research abstracts (1942–2024): a structural topic model and call for interdisciplinary perspectives |
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ERA Journal ID | 19743 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | Healy, Michael, McIlveen, Peter, Brown, Jason L., Van der Heijden, Beatrice and Donald, William E. |
Journal Title | Career Development International |
Number of Pages | 16 |
Year | 2025 |
Publisher | Emerald |
Place of Publication | United Kingdom |
ISSN | 1362-0436 |
1758-6003 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-09-2024-0383 |
Web Address (URL) | https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/cdi-09-2024-0383/full/html |
Abstract | Purpose Our goal was to empirically evaluate what topics can be discerned in employability scholarship. We sought to illustrate the diverse specialised expert knowledge across the full multidisciplinary breadth of employability literature, not only in the two predominant fields of graduate employability and career development Design/methodology/approach Structural topic modelling, an unsupervised statistical method that helps discern latent topics in a corpus of texts, analysed the abstracts of 7,591 journal articles on employability. Exploratory analysis showed that the 11-topic model offered the highest number of distinct and meaningful topics. Findings The 11 topics within the field of employability reflect research in a range of scholarly disciplines. We summarise the content of each topic and visualise the topic profiles of top journal articles, journals and authors. Research limitations/implications Recent calls for greater integration between graduate employability and career development scholarships are warranted. But this study demonstrates that employability is studied in a much broader range of disciplines than just those two. Therefore, we argue that future scholarship should foster the advancement and application of research insights across the full breadth of disciplines, education and training systems and socio-cultural contexts. By doing so, the often-noted fragmentation and fuzziness in the employability literature will begin to be addressed. Originality/value Existing reviews of employability research have been grounded in a particular scholarly discipline. In contrast, we adopt an inductive approach, surveying the literature through the widest possible lens, free from disciplinary biases and assumptions. |
Keywords | graduate employability; Employability; structural topic modeling; career development |
Contains Sensitive Content | Does not contain sensitive content |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 390303. Higher education |
390115. Work integrated learning (incl. internships) | |
Byline Affiliations | School of Education |
Education Services Australia | |
University of Melbourne | |
Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands | |
Ghent University, Belgium | |
Hubei University, China | |
Kingston University, United Kingdom | |
Open University of the Netherlands, Netherlands | |
University of Southampton, United Kingdom | |
Donald Research & Consulting, United Kingdom |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/zwz1v/11-topics-among-7-591-employability-research-abstracts-1942-2024-a-structural-topic-model-and-call-for-interdisciplinary-perspectives
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Healy et al 2025 topic model employability.pdf | ||
License: CC BY 4.0 | ||
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